Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain
the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in
Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles
and JavaScript.
We all appreciate how chemical knowledge has advanced over the years, but Bruce C. Gibb reminds us that chemical culture has similarly made great advances.
Louis Pasteur was a scientific giant of the nineteenth century, but, as Joseph Gal asks, was his most famous contribution to the understanding of chemistry — chirality — influenced more by his artistic talents?
The chemical universe is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. Bruce Gibb reminds us that it's somewhat messy too, and so we succeed by recognizing the limits of our knowledge.