Atkins' What Is Chemistry Chapter 6: Its Achievements

In this chapter, Atkins summarizes the major achievements and contributions of chemistry to society.  He starts with water, its sanitation and purification through reverse osmosis.  The discovery of using chlorine derived through electrolysis as a sterilizing agent was highlighted.

He then describes chemistry's contributions to the ability of humans to extract nitrogen from air and phosphorus from minerals in a form that can be used to improve the efficiency of growing food from the earth.  

Next on his list are sources of energy starting from the traditional petroleum based source.  He then mentions that, through chemistry, our ability to harvest the sun's energy has vastly improved, contributing to an increasingly important player in electricity generation, electrochemistry, in batteries in particular.  

Nuclear energy, through fission for now and fusion in the future, was also highlighted albeit with its many challenges despite its great promise.  

A description of human chemical invention of course is not complete without mentioning plastics, another societally important extract from petroleum.  He summarized the importance of plastics in many facets of life but also highlighted the fact that we have been able to conserve natural resources like wood and metal by replacing them whenever possible with plastic.  

Ceramics are also mentioned as a great chemical achievement that has contributed to our ability to use lightweight but strong structural material and also in the realm of superconductive materials.  

Dyes have also played an important role in the history of civilization.  Synthetic dyes have allowed the use of dyes without having to resort to destroying natural sources, like organisms, of different colored dyes or depleting natural minerals.

Chemists are also involved in developing the necessary hardware and infrastructure to support our heavily digitalized world of smart phones and smart gadgets.  A subset of this is the necessary development of material to support the design and construction of increasingly fast and efficient computers, e.g. Molecular and quantum based computing technology where manipulation of molecules and atoms provides the impetus for transfer of digital signals.

While big pharmaceuticals have earned a not so positive reputation, it can not be denied that this chemistry based industry has been the source of many chemical inventions and discoveries that have led to the alleviation of pain through the use of anesthetics and regular pain relievers.  Surgeries can not be possible today without the use of anesthesia.  Chemists in the pharmaceutical industry has also contributed to our knowledge of natural sources of medication either as a primary source or to mimic through synthesis.

Closely allied with this is the contribution of chemical biologists and biochemists in the molecular understanding of life through genomics and proteomics.  "Biology became chemistry half a century ago when the structure if DNA was discovered (in 1953)."