"Mass spectrometry, chromatography, chemistry .... what is the purpose?''

Abstract

This multifaceted question will be addressed through details of the speaker’s own career, drawing conclusions as to the role of Chemistry at the University of Pretoria and in our country. The use of expensive instruments and highly sophisticated infrastructure is justifiably under scrutiny when a university considers state-of-the-art education and research in the experimental sciences. Doubly so in a country with an emerging economy where the priority lies with primary education, crime prevention, health care, service delivery, housing and job creation. The apparent contradiction of high-tech science in a developing country can only be resolved when facilities are correctly managed, world class research leaders can be recruited, critical mass can be maintained over years, applied projects of obvious local relevance are tackled and research money can be leveraged from industry and international agencies with the common goal of sustainable development.Where these conditions cannot be guaranteed, responsible action requires such facilities to rather be closed down towards consolidation of those with a better chance of serving the needs of society. Analytical chemical technology provides the means to perform reality checks on theoretical models in the natural sciences and is thus fundamental to the advance of diverse disciplines that increasingly require understanding at the atomic and molecular level. The techniques of Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry (MS) are both about one hundred years old but commercial equipment only became available much later, largely through the need of the petrochemical industry that, even today, grapples with quality control of products such as petrol or diesel that can contain more than 30,000 compounds. The two techniques couple synergistically and today all well-equipped government and industrial laboratories have GC-MS and LC-MS equipment to perform routine tasks. More sophisticated research is performed on multi-dimensional and high resolution instruments as found in the laboratories at UP. These non-routine techniques are required to train future analytical chemists and to support research in matters of health, water, energy, food, forensic science, biology, environmental pollution, archaeology and engineering - examples of such interdisciplinary projects are ongoing at UP.