List of unsolved problems in chemistry

This article has multiple issues. Please help or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help to ensure that disputed statements are reliably sourced. (November 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article needs attention from an expert in chemistry. The specific problem is: Incomplete list. WikiProject Chemistry may be able to help recruit an expert. (November 2011) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources:  –  ·  ·  · scholar · JSTOR (December 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) This article or section possibly contains synthesis of material which does not verifiably mention or relate to the main topic. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. (June 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this template message) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

Unsolved problems in chemistry tend to be questions of the kind "Can we make X chemical compound?", "Can we analyse it?", "Can we purify it?" and are commonly solved rather quickly, but may just as well require considerable efforts to be solved. However, there are also some questions with deeper implications. This article tends to deal with the areas that are the center of new scientific research in chemistry. Problems in chemistry are considered unsolved when an expert in the field considers it unsolved or when several experts in the field disagree about a solution to a problem.

Physical chemistry problems[]

• What are the electronic structures of high-temperature superconductors at various points on their phase diagrams?
• Can the transition temperature of high-temperature superconductors be brought up to room temperature?
• What happens to the electron cloud at very high atomic numbers, when the innermost electrons would, using a non-relativistic model, be calculated to exceed the speed of light? While calculations assuming the nucleus as a charged point indicate that this should happen around element 137, more accurate ones which take into account the nucleus's finite size push this limit to around element 173.^[1]

Organic chemistry problems[]

• What is the origin of homochirality in biomolecules?^[2]
• Why are accelerated kinetics observed for some organic reactions at the water-organic interface?^{[3][non-primary source needed]}
• What is the origin of the alpha effect, that is, that nucleophiles with an electronegative atom with lone pairs adjacent to the nucleophilic center are particularly reactive?^[4]

Biochemistry problems[]

• Enzyme kinetics: Why do some enzymes exhibit faster-than-diffusion kinetics?^[5]
• Protein folding problem: Is it possible to predict the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a polypeptide sequence based solely on the sequence and environmental information? Inverse protein-folding problem: Is it possible to design a polypeptide sequence which will adopt a given structure under certain environmental conditions?^[2][6] This has been achieved for several small globular proteins in recent years.^[7]
• RNA folding problem: Is it possible to accurately predict the secondary, tertiary and quaternary structure of a polyribonucleic acid sequence based on its sequence and environment?
• What are the chemical origins of life? How did non-living chemical compounds generate self-replicating, complex life forms?
• Protein design: Is it possible to design highly active enzymes de novo for any desired reaction?^[8]
• Biosynthesis: Can desired molecules, natural products or otherwise, be produced in high yield through biosynthetic pathway manipulation?^[9]

References[]

External links[]

• "First 25 of 125 big questions that face scientific inquiry over the next quarter-century". Science. 309 (125th Anniversary). 1 July 2005.
• Unsolved Problems in Nanotechnology: Chemical Processing by Self-Assembly - Matthew Tirrell - Departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials, Materials Research Laboratory, California NanoSystems Institute, University of California, Santa Barbara [No doc at link, 20 Aug 2016]