THE obituary might read something like this. “After many centuries of service, the science of chemistry died last week following a long illness. It will not be missed, commented a nanotechnologist. The science had long been under siege from other disciplines that chipped away at its claim to be the study of matter and its interactions. The final assault was two-pronged. On one front came the insidious march of biology, which staked out the study of biological molecules. On the other, physics proclaimed itself the fundamental science of everything, including the interaction between atoms and molecules.
“It was only a matter of time, observed one physicist,…
