Chemometrics was developed in the 1960s. It extracts information from chemical systems by using methods such as multivariate statistics, applied mathematics, and computer science, to address problems in chemistry, biochemistry, medicine, biology, and chemical engineering. Hence, its area took off with the advent of scientific computing, especially with the development of computerized laboratories.

Svante Wold, Umeå Universitet, Sweden, invented the word chemometrics for a grant application in late 1971. In 1974, together with Bruce Kowalski, University of Washington, Seattle, USA, he created the International Chemometrics Society (ICS). The first paper with the word chemometrics in it was published by Wold in 1972. Remarkably, it is only cited seven times according to the Web of Science.
Richard G. Brereton, University of Bristol, UK, sees Wold and Kowalski clearly amongst the important pioneers, but they named an existing discipline that had already been seeded in the mid-1960s.

In the 1980s, the first dedicated journals Chemometrics and Intelligent Laboratory Systems and Journal of Chemometrics, the first book with chemometrics in the title, several ACS symposia, the first book series (Research Studies Press), the first dedicated software (ARTHUR, SIMCA, and UNSCRAMBLER), and the first workshops appeared. A meeting held in Cosenza, Italy, in 1983 was probably the first major attempt to get together a diverse international range of scientists working in chemometrics.

Today only around 2 % of people encountering chemometrics in their research can be considered real experts; the rest are non-expert users of packages. This trend accounts for the relative reduction in core chemometrics capability in Western countries. So, according to Brereton, the future will show if chemometrics, for financial and political reasons, is in danger of being buried within application science, especially metabolomics.

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• A short history of chemometrics: a personal view,
  Richard G. Brereton,
  J. Chemometrics 2014.
  DOI: 10.1002/cem.2633

Also of interest:

	Chemometrics for Pattern Recognition by Richard Brereton September 2009, Hardcover (E-book also available) US $150.00
	Applied Chemometrics for Scientists by Richard G. Brereton April 2007, Hardcover (E-book also available) US $125.00
	Chemometrics: Data Analysis for the Laboratory and Chemical Plant by Richard G. Brereton April 2003, Paperback (E-book also available)