Atkins' What is Chemistry, Chapter 7: Its Future

In this last chapter, Atkins describes briefly what, in his opinion, are the most notable future endeavors of chemists (note that this book was written in 2013).

First and foremost, he highlights chemists' continuous efforts toward discovering new elements, albeit many of them short-lived and "utterly useless" in his parlance.  He did note that perhaps this is getting us closer to the hypothetical island of stability, long theorized to exist by many prominent nuclear chemists and physicists.

Next is in the field of miniaturization, particularly in the realm of being able to synthesize small, nanoscale small, functional molecules that can be controlled for various applications.  From the theoretical point of view and in the interest of pure research, chemists are also able to assemble small clusters of molecules to distill the most fundamental properties that are often obscured by macroscopic bulk samples.  For instance he notes that to study the ice-like properties of water, one needs only assemble 275 water molecules and to observe a true ice structure 465 molecules.  Related to this is also the ability of chemists to slow down a very minute sample of molecules even down to the attosecond scale in order to study their properties and motion.   The ability to prepare a layer of graphene has also been instrumental in their ability to study its electrical and structural properties for very promising uses.  Many of these will have applications in the miniaturization of hardware material for computational technology.

Catalysis is another field that is working hard to investigate and produce even more efficient and widely available catalysts especially in the realm of energy production and elimination or mitigation if pollutants in the process.

Photochemistry is another big field where chemists are trying to find more and more ways to harness the sun's energy not just as a direct source of energy but also as another mode by which chemical reactions can be optimized.  A very mundane example given of an application of this is in self-cleaning windows that make use of titanium dioxide that breaks down chemically any organic dirt upon exposure to sunlight.

Closer to the field of biochemistry are the subfields of proteomics and genomics where protein synthesis, folding, and properties are being studied to shed light on biological processes important in the design and synthesis for medicinal applications.

Lastly, of course, Atkins points out that the future of chemistry is still the business of doing for the sake of doing science and acquisition of knowledge, regardless of any promising application or not.  As he notes toward the end, "Fundamental research is absolutely vital to this endeavor, for it leads to unforeseen discoveries, unforeseen understanding, and unforeseen applications of extraordinary brilliance."