Chemistry

Today’s illicit chemists can quickly cook up drugs far more dangerous than fentanyl.

By Jonathan Corum and Matt Richtel

Times reporters were given access to a small operation on the frontier of illicit drugs.

By Matt Richtel and Jonathan Corum

A baffling overdose death took investigators to the frontier of ultra-potent synthetic drugs. The clues were hauntingly familiar.

By Matt Richtel and Meridith Kohut

Overdose rates in the United States have surged with the emergence of new synthetic drugs. Matt Richtel reports from a lab in Pennsylvania where scientists are identifying new drug molecules that toxicology reports can’t detect.

By Matt Richtel, Kassie Bracken, Ben Laffin, Daniel Vergara and James Surdam

She and her staff at Union Carbide created synthetic materials that improved various industrial processes, including purifying water. She also developed a way to make emeralds.

By Richard Sandomir

He accidentally created some of the first quantum dots, tiny semiconductors that now power many electronics.

By Katrina Miller

Ron Robinson, founder of the BeautyStat brand and a cosmetic chemist behind Hailey Bieber’s Rhode line, has been formulating products for 35 years.

By Rachel Felder

The scientific Nobels announced this week — in Physiology or Medicine, Physics and Chemistry — honored achievements rooted in fundamental research from decades ago.

By Katrina Miller

The prize was awarded to Susumu Kitagawa, Richard Robson and Omar Yaghi for the development of an architecture that some chemists compare with a molecular sponge.

By Alexa Robles-Gil and Ali Watkins

Hailed as one of the 50 most important women in science, she found ways to study rare radioactive isotopes and advanced the understanding of nuclear fission.

By Delthia Ricks