From D W DAVIES
I was interested in John Nicholson’s article ‘Our brilliant careers’
(Forum, 10 March), in which he discussed his accidental route into chemistry.
I happened to read the article the day after hearing another chemist, Sir
George Porter, on Desert Island Discs.
Having just retired after 40 years as a chemist, mostly in universities,
but including a couple of years in industry, I find my experience much closer
to that of Porter than of Nicholson. Like Porter, I was fascinated by the
excitement of making crystals and colours, and bangs and ‘stinks’, and,
as a boy, I spent all my pocket money on my laboratory, which was not in
a bus in the garden as Porter’s was. Nearly all the chemists I have met
have shared this boyhood fascination with the subject.
Later, the intellectual challenge of trying to understand the double
helix, or the ceramic superconductors, or giving a judgment on ‘fusion in
a test tube’ has kept my interest alive; and the poetry is still there:
as Hinshelwood wrote, ‘To understand the secret of the rose’s fragrance
or the oak’s tenacity, that is the purpose of chemistry.’
D. W. Davies Shetland
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