Many faces of Edward Teller

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Your very prompt obituary of Edward Teller curiously fails to mention his important contributions to chemistry, in particular the Jahn-Teller effect, which continues to thrill spectroscopists and magnetochemists whilst plaguing undergraduates everywhere (C&EN, Sept. 15, page 9).

Furthermore, the work [Proc. R. Soc. London, Ser. A, 161, 220 (1937)] was carried out not at "London City College," as stated in your obituary, but rather at University College London, where he had arrived in 1934 with help from Frederick George Donnan, then the head of the chemistry department at UCL and foreign secretary of the Royal Society. Donnan had offered Teller a lectureship.

In 1976, Teller remembered his time here in an article titled "A Word of Thanks," which he submitted to the Journal of the Chemical & Physical Society (the departmental student society's organ). I reproduce the short piece verbatim:

	TELLER
	PHOTO BY JACQUELINE MCBRIDE/LLNL

"When Hitler took over in Germany, prompt and effective action was started in England to rescue the scientists endangered by the Nazi tyranny. One man particularly active in this operation was professor F. G. Donnan of University College. He invited me to visit him in London. He offered me the job on one condition: that I read one little volume to remedy my deplorable lack of education. He gave me 'Alice in Wonderland.' The period spent at University College was perhaps the most happy in my life. Part of the reason is that I was newly married. But that was not all. One point that remains clearly in my memory is that out of the five afternoon tea periods in any week in the chemistry department, professor Donnan introduced the custom of speaking German on one day. I doubt that many refugees have been treated in a more understanding fashion. Apart from the lectures I gave in English (which I hope was improving during that period), there was plenty of opportunity for scientific cooperation.

"Of the many discussions, I want to mention two: The work of professor Ingold on deuterated benzene, which led to the useful product rules for the frequencies of vibrations that govern the effects of isotopic substitution; the other is the work of Jahn and myself, which achieved the distinction of being called the Jahn-Teller Effect (why an effect is more distinguished than a plain scientific paper, I do not know).

"In 1935, I accepted an invitation to the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. It had been made perfectly clear to all of us that the British could not absorb the brain drain from Central Europe. When the possibility arose to start a new life in the New World, many of us left with regret, fond memories, and a grateful knowledge that in Great Britain, some right actions were taken for the simple reason that they were right."

Andrea Sella
London

 

Your recent obituary on Teller was a disappointment to me and, I suspect, a large number of readers of C&EN. While listing the positive achievements of Teller, the piece ignored the controversial legacies that simply cannot be separated from the man. In particular, the piece makes no mention that Teller is often considered the "father of the H-bomb," a dubious distinction to say the least, given that this is certainly the worst weapon of mass destruction ever developed or likely to be developed. Furthermore, he is credited with convincing President Reagan of the merits of "Star Wars," which so far has wasted tens of billions of dollars and lives on today as a stimulant to the nuclear arms race.

As a member of the scientific community, I am insulted that you would include me as one who "mourned the loss" of Teller, when instead I join with many other members of the community who feel this would have been a better world without an Edward Teller.

Donald J. Hnatowich
Worcester, Mass.

 

Risk and reward

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In the letter by Erwin E. Morse titled "Drug versus chemical companies," he argues that drug companies should reduce their profit margins and use that "extra" money generated to reduce drug prices (C&EN, Sept. 8, page 8).

In an earlier editorial, Rudy Baum compared the research dollar investment between the two sectors--chemical and pharmaceutical--and drew attention to the huge disparity (C&EN, July 7, page 3). The disparity exits for a reason.

Basic economic principles warrant that assuming greater risks should entail promise of greater returns. The pharmaceutical industry works in an intensely risky environment. A successful drug takes 10–15 years to reach the market, starting from the chemist's bench, and consumes $800 million in the process. The major contribution to this total cost comes from the dismal success rate of new candidates. In fact, 75% of the total cost of drug development has been attributed to developmental failures.

Drug discovery is an intrinsically expensive undertaking. Chemical research, on the other hand, though it involves its own perils, in comparison is far "safer" economically.

The drug industry invests more of its sales dollars in research than any other industry. Taken as a ratio of (or percent of) total sales returns, virtually no other industry does that. Maybe it's time that the chemical industry looks at the pharmaceutical model of research investment and pours in more money to R&D. The question whether it is required at all is debatable.

There is indeed the need to reduce drug prices, making life-saving drugs available to the public and improving access to important medicines. But cutting the research investment is hardly the way to go.

Pankaj V. Paranjpe
Piscataway, N.J.

 

Perhaps Morse should reconsider what differentiates drugs from bulk chemicals. That ton of chemical from DuPont is probably a commodity item, made by many other companies around the world. How many years of clinical testing were required before DuPont could sell it? Probably none. Any toxicology tests required? Not many, if any. Is DuPont required to submit a large registration package demonstrating safety and efficacy? No. Just produce the chemical, package, and sell.

However, the pharmaceutical industry is likely the most highly regulated industry in the developed world. It takes ever-increasing amounts of time (10 years plus) and money (hundreds of millions of dollars) to perform all the preclinical and clinical research required to demonstrate that a new chemical entity is safe and effective. Thus, the risk that pharmaceutical companies assume is large, and the compensation required for assuming this risk is a profit margin substantially above what is required to manufacture bulk chemicals. If the American people do not wish to pay for medicine (and clearly, Americans do not like paying for anything), the government will see to it that people are not directly burdened by having to pay for their medicine. But someday Morse, or his wife or kids, will need medicine to treat an illness, and the doctor will simply offer his condolences.

Steven B. Sands
Stonington, Conn.

 

Designing facts

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As an industrial chemist with more than 20 years of experience, I found the letter with the heading "Flawed Design?" dismaying (C&EN, Sept. 8, page 8). The unstated conclusion seems to be that there is no value in "designed experiments" and this subject should be avoided altogether. I pity the letter writer, who must have been oversold and underprepared when he was introduced to the design of experiments (DoE). Unfortunately, many aspects of modern life have been "overhyped and overrated" by someone, even those aspects that provide real value but now may suffer or worse be ignored because of reactions like those of this letter writer.

I found that the article on DoE was researched and written well (C&EN, July 14, page 37). I hope that most of your readers were able to learn more about how other chemists have mastered this important technique and applied it successfully. The fact is that many leading companies have embraced this methodology because it works.

If the "long-term analytical variability is much more significant" so that it "will easily throw off the models," then how can these data, regardless of the experiment or test, be used at all to characterize a process or judge results? If "it takes several trials to determine limits for a designed experiment," then we do not yet know much about the response and inherent variability of our process. We should prudently learn enough to reduce the risk of failure or inconclusive results later on. If "the actual number of trials ... is actually quite large," then we must carefully and thoughtfully develop and consider alternative solutions and every available technique to finally design a study that is within our budget or determine that it is not feasible at the start instead of the end of the journey.

Are "one factor at a time" (OFAT) experiments always superior? They might be the best choice sometimes. If we already know a lot about our system and we need to investigate only a few factors that are not involved with each other or any other factors, then we can safely use OFAT trials. We must still consider, though, the adequacy of our "model" and the nonsystematic variability in our data when we determine the number and range of factor levels and the amount of replication that will provide the accuracy and precision that we require. The total number of trials may still be large using OFAT, and our best result, found by this "pick the winner" approach, is simply the best that we observed, not necessarily the best that is possible, which might be significantly better.

If, on the other hand, we do not know much about our system and we need to investigate many factors that may be strongly involved with each other, then OFAT represents a risky and expensive "random walk" through the factor space. We must count on the luck of the draw as much as our science to find conclusive and lasting answers. Chemical reactions and systems are usually complicated by interactions, often by design as we try to exploit every angle of the chemistry. We can obtain confusing and even contradictory results because we cannot account for these interactions. We are not probing for them. The results cannot be combined and used together to predict the response anywhere within the experimental region.

In the process of "hyping" DoE, the impression is sometimes given that it is almost infallible, guaranteed, or automatic. The reality is that DoE can only augment and bolster our knowledge and skills, not replace them. DoE was born out of the chemical and agricultural sciences almost a century ago, when conducting meaningful experiments in the face of deepening uncertainty and increasing variability became more difficult. It provides ways to obtain data that can be trusted and that efficiently and sufficiently answer given questions. It should simply be an integral part of the scientific method at the point where we plan and execute our data collection.

Mark Bailey
Haddonfield, N.J.

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