Letters: May 2019

A beautiful subject

When I was a student, my principal motivation was not to learn about chemistry – it was to pass examinations. At that stage I had no clear idea what a career in chemistry might be like.

Later, in my working career, I used instrumental methods of analysis to provide results which enabled me to support customers, develop products and control quality. The instruments were meticulously maintained and calibrated, but I was kept too busy by daily pressures to think about the fundamental chemistry underlying the techniques involved.

When I retired from work in 2011, I bought a modern textbook of organic chemistry so that I could finally read chemistry for its own sake. Maybe I bought the wrong textbook, because it didn’t really work. It wasn’t until 2014 that I learned about becoming a STEM ambassador. Only then did I begin to realise how remarkable chemistry is through talking about my subject with students in schools and colleges.

For the past two years, whilst continuing with outreach activities, I have been helping three of my grandchildren prepare for their GCSEs and A-levels. I often find myself saying to them ‘Isn’t that amazing?’

It has taken me more than 50 years to truly realise the wonder of my subject and to be captivated by, for example, the majesty of the molecules synthesised routinely by nature. But I got there in the end – it just took the eyes of children to enable me to see the beauty of chemistry.