Angewandte Chemie 16/2018: 350 Years of Discovery and Curiosity

This special issue of Angewandte Chemie celebrates the 350th anniversary of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany. Accordingly, the company’s CEO Stefan Oschmann discusses curiosity about the future in an Editorial; and curiosity is also the subject of G. M. Whitesides’ Essay. K. Griesar et al. describe a recipe for corporate longevity in an Essay. Further Essays deal with directed evolution (F. H. Arnold), synthetic organic electrochemistry (P. S. Baran), multidisciplinarity in drug delivery (R. Langer), quantum machine learning in chemistry (O. A. von Lilienfeld), computational chemistry (S. Grimme, P. R. Schreiner), and the relation between chemistry and architecture (D. Trauner).

This celebratory issue is further complemented by Reviews and Minireviews on a diverse range of topics, e. g. automated synthesis of small molecules (M. Trobe, M. D. Burke), smart factories for specialty chemicals (M. Grünewald et al.), soft robotics (G. M. Whitesides), C–H bond functionalization in natural products (R. R. Karimov, J. F. Hartwig), quantum dots for displays (U. Banin et al.), liquid crystals (T. Sakamoto et al.), and non-canonical bases in the genome (T. Carell et al.)