Sir

In your interesting Opinion article on chemistry (Nature 411, 399; 2001), you comment that in my Perspective article “The Quiet Revolution in Chemistry” (Chemical and Engineering News 64–65, 7 August 2000), I stop short of identifying potential applications. This is not so.

In my Perspective I identify how, by achieving one or more of the objectives on my 'wish list', chemists could contribute significantly to improving the human condition.

I list three of many possible applications in an 'imagine' list: imagine bridges that do not corrode; imagine Rome, Bangkok and Los Angeles with no air pollution, and with tap water that you would enjoy drinking; and imagine learning the entire health profile of a person from a drop of blood.

My point was to highlight some of the grand challenges of fundamental chemistry, which many believe are as exciting and important as similar challenges in our sister fields of biology and physics.

I used the term "quiet" in the sense that the science media are not fully aware of these revolutionary objectives, and Nature is to be applauded for helping to make the revolution more noisy.