Ahh right. Physics is up against the computational complexity brick wall in understanding, but vast swathes of chemistry, especially ambient condition chemistry, is moderately-cheap-benchtop-experiment driven => lots of low hanging fruit I believe, but probably tough for grand theory builders who still need tenure(though limited "unifications" still occur.. click chemistry? Quantum dots? Etc) very useful, very applicable, but not as grand as what Feynman did. A lot of Bell Labs era breakthroughs (transistor, crystal growth, laser, basic litho etc) are on the order of sophistication as some cutting edge wetchem today.
My RSS reader shows me a lot of papers in practical chemistry and I am astonished by what people are doing with Metal Organic Frameworks, Deep Eutectic Solvents, etc. (I sure wish I could get HNers to upvote some articles on these!)
Perhaps chemical recycling of plastics will always be an El Dorado like the fast breeder reactor, but it seems something is going to come out of all the efforts to cheapen hydrogen electrolysis, using CO2 as a feedstock material, figure out how to make something valuable out of cellulose better than
(the video on that page is worth watching the whole thing. My wife had bought those mushrooms and was wondering how the hell they could sell them so cheap, turns out they can grow those on straw without anybody laying a hand on them until they arrive at the grocer)
