FORTY YEARS OF DEVELOPMENT AND INNOVATION IN BRAZILIAN CHEMISTRY

The Brazilian chemical community shows positive characteristics that improved significantly during the past forty years: the scientific output is substantial, it contributes positively to the position of this country in the innovation rankings, the chemical companies create and export technologies and the larger share of post-graduates employed by the Brazilian industry works in chemical or chemistry-based companies. The chemical sector is thus an exception within the country, together with agrosciences. These facts are unexpected, considering that chemical companies do not occupy leading positions in the rankings based on patent filing and other innovation indicators, throughout the world. This article describes the context of Brazilian chemistry in the middle 1970s, the the well-designed government actions that mobilized academic researchers and industry professionals to build complex converging scenarios and a positive S&T culture that is matched in few other areas, in this country.