Bringing vital subject of chemistry out of the laboratory

From Yorkshire’s Joseph Priestley and his discovery of oxygen to 1904 Nobel Laureate William Ramsay’s identification of a new group of elements know as the noble gases – argon, krypton, helium, zenon and neon – which completed the periodic table, the roll call of discovery goes ever on.

There was the former Sheffield University undergraduate and PhD student Harold Kroto’s 1996 Nobel Prize for the discovery of fullerene carbon compounds, just one of the wonders made possible by dedicated chemists whose discoveries helped the work of their successors and have applications to everyday life.

Many of the world’s greatest discoveries have been made at the point where other sciences collide with chemistry. The new £7m magnetic resonance centre being built at York University – home of one of the country’s largest chemistry departments – will make possible further work into scanning by Professor Simon Duckett and his team, enabling diagnosis and treatment of a host of conditions in minutes rather than days as at present. Biology, psychology, medicine and other disciplines are involved, but chemistry is at the centre of this magnificent project.

Crucial though chemistry is, it tends to be either the mysterious subatomic particles and glamorous cosmology of physics, or biological science’s new species, genetic codes and evolutionary theory that hog the headlines.

Both physics and biology have their poster boys (yes, usually men) on television, but where is the presentable chemist who can interpret the bangs, the smells, and the everyday importance of chemistry to a wider audience?

Twenty per cent of the UK’s GDP comes from chemical industries, and many of the problems of the future around pollution, health care and clean water can not be solved without heavy involvement of chemists, yet the world of chemistry feels it suffers from a Cinderella complex.

“There is a branding problem,” says Richard Porte of the Royal Society of Chemistry. “We certainly should work harder to make people aware of just how much chemistry is involved in some of the most exciting scientific discoveries happening today.”

The RSC hopes that events going on in the current International Year of Chemistry will help to change the view that chemists and chemistry are remote and speak a language from outer space. “We want chemists to be seen as real people,” says Porte.

Chemists will be coming out of the lab to a venue near you, and on June 22 children from schools around the world are invited to take part in the simultaneous experiment Water: A Chemical Solution, a one-day project looking at the properties and quality of their local water.

Mr Porte believes not enough is done to spell out to young people the opportunities that a degree in chemistry can open up.

“An important message is that not all chemists wear white coats. Those who don’t stay in academe go into fields as varied as motor racing, the City, patent law, journalism and environmental research. Students learn analytical and numerical skills, the ability to question and deal with new ideas, planning and manual skills.

“Chemistry maybe isn’t being sold enough as an exciting field, and it’s also worrying that new schools are being built with inadequate lab facilities.”

Despite these anxieties about general perceptions of the subject, the number of undergraduates studying the subject across the UK has actually risen from just over 3,000 seven years ago to 4,200 this year. York University, which has one of only two chemistry departments appearing in the top five of all three annual university league tables this year, has had 1,300 high-quality applicants for 140-150 places this year. More cheerful news is that while chemistry should promote itself more, after a few years of slump the take-up of it at A-level is improving.

“The numbers applying for chemistry still aren’t as high as we’d like,” says admissions tutor Dr Andrew Parsons. “It’s seen as a difficult subject and has suffered from negative publicity to do with spillages of chemicals and other pollution. But other big positive global stories from carbon footprint research to renewable fuels also have chemistry at their core.”

[email protected]

International Year of Chemistry information: www.chemistry2011.org