It has been recognized for some time that close collaboration between chemists, physicists, biologists and medical practitioners will be needed to solve the problems of human health and disease. This already was clear when I began research in my field over 40 years ago. Thus, I have made every effort in my career to integrate physical, biological and medical thinking into the efforts of my group often (usually?) despite the “advice/criticism” of many of my senior colleagues, particularly in chemistry. A major contention of these chemists was that by collaborating with biologists, you become a weaker scientist because chemistry was a “better science” than biology. Of course history has shown them to be wrong, and as a result, most chemists have not participated in the major scientific revolutions in the past 50 years, the molecular biology revolution and the neuroscience revolution. In the context of these “mine fields” I will discuss how close collaborations with biologists have allowed us to open up new fields in the chemical biology of human behavior and disease, with special emphasis on chemical aspects of pharmacology, physiology, endocrinology and molecular biology and biophysics that led to the design, synthesis, biological evaluation and in some cases, clinical trials of novel compounds. The talk will conclude with observations/speculations of why such true interdisciplinary collaborations are still the exception rather than the rule.

Supported by grants from the USPHS, NIH and NSF. A special thanks to my collaborators, students and colleagues who nonetheless made my scientific career possible.