The central months of the year represent a vibrant season for the scientific community, with a lot of interesting conferences happening all around the globe and researchers preparing to exchange ideas and learn from each other. The hot season, at least in the Northern Hemisphere, is host to numerous events in the catalysis area, such as the 28th meeting of the North American Catalysis Society — which just concluded in Rhode Island — or EuropaCat — the biannual congress of the European Federation of Catalysis Societies — which will open its doors at the end of August in Prague. Conversely, summer is also a good time to take a well-deserved break from work and enjoy some time off with friends and family, or to focus on one’s own well-being.

Whether you are planning to travel for work or to enjoy some free time, we hope the selection of articles in the current issue of Nature Catalysis will be an inspiring read for the summertime. We would like to highlight, in particular, the new additions to our retro News & Views series, that this year focus on established catalytic processes that have had a direct impact on our society by providing important commodity chemicals or pharmaceuticals.

“Whether you are planning to travel for work or to enjoy some free time, we hope the selection of articles in the current issue of Nature Catalysis will be an inspiring read for the summertime.”

Thavendran Govender and Tricia Naicker revisit the story of insulin, portraying the role that recombinant DNA technologies have played in the biocatalytic production of this crucial therapeutic for the treatment of diabetes, now part of the list of the essential medicines of the World Health Organization.

Moving from medicines to materials, Giuseppe Antinucci, Roberta Cipullo and Vincenzo Busico retrace the events that led to the production of polypropylene — one of the most produced plastics in the world — and comment on the legacy of the research that allowed its discovery.

In the area of commodity chemicals, Aleksandar R. Zeradjanin discusses how technological breakthroughs, such as the introduction of dimensionally stable anodes in the 1970s, had allowed a steep reduction in electricity consumption for the chlor-alkali process — a large-scale approach for the production of chlorine and sodium hydroxide.

Finally, this issue also features a retro News & Views article in the section ‘Seminal Works’. This contribution by Mie Andersen provides an account of the genesis of the d-band model, a theory developed to explain adsorption trends on transition-metal surfaces, which, 30 years after its foundation, still continues to inspire theoretical studies aimed at interpreting or predicting reactivity in the field of heterogeneous catalysis.

Besides, the issue also contains some exciting contributions from across the field that range from the application of zeolites to traditional hydrocyanation and transfer hydroformylation reactions to the development of pyridoxal 5′-phosphate-dependent enzymes capable of catalysing stereoselective intramolecular Mannich reactions, to name a few. We hope you enjoy reading them.

And last but not the least, we would like to provide an update related to our editorial team. Some of you may already have noticed that, as of April this year, Francesco Zamberlan has joined our teams at Nature Catalysis and Nature Chemical Biology as a cross-journal Associate Editor, transitioning into his new role after a stint at Nature Communications. Francesco has received training in synthetic organic chemistry during his PhD at the University of Ferrara, followed by post-doctoral appointments at the University of Nottingham and the University of Glasgow, where he focused on the synthesis of nanomaterials as well as on the development of sensors. Thanks to his diverse experience, he is handling manuscripts in the areas of organic and biological catalysis. We also welcome Long Chen to the team, who also joins us from Nature Communications as a Senior Editor for a secondment. Long has a vast experience in heterogeneous catalysis, both as a researcher as well as an editor, and will assist the team with submissions in this area until the beginning of November.