Take chemistry, for instance. I can hear the barrage of derisive snorts
already, but the fact is that much modern chemistry does not need mathematics
to carry it out. Not only chemistry, but biology, biochemistry and geology,
too, do not usually require elaborate mathematical skills and in some cases,
they require no mathematical skills at all. Yet we who practise these subjects
are made to feel guilty about it. We have been indoctrinated into feeling
that any non-mathematical science is not worthy of the name. It is unintellectual,
somehow, and fit only for rustic backwoodsmen in the outer fringes of the
subject.

What are the practical manifestations of undue respect for mathematical
skills? Again, consider chemistry. Typically, in order to read for a degree
in chemistry, students are expected to get a reasonable pass in maths at
A level. A few universities will take students who have not studied maths
to A level but, once at university, these students have to take a remedial
course to get them up to A level standard. Why? What do chemists do with
all this mathematical knowledge that they are forced to take in during their
formative years? In general the answer is ‘Very little’.

In my own career, I had written 33 research papers before I needed to
use anything as mathematically advanced as simple statistics. Yet in order
to obtain a BSc in chemistry I had to endure the remedial maths course,
including integration, differentiation, Taylor’s and MacLaurin’s series
and all. As soon as I passed the exam I forgot all about it. And I have
never used it since.

Yet this regard for the mathematical over the descriptive did not always
prevail. Michael Faraday, for instance, that prince of physical scientists
knew no mathematics; in more than 400 papers describing his work he did
not use a single mathematical formula. Thomas Young, who even has an equation
named after him, was another who did not use mathematics. In fact there
is considerable doubt as to whether the so-called ‘Young’s equation’ conveys
the same meaning as the descriptive prose that Young himself used in his
paper of 1805.

Moving on about a century, consider Alfred Werner, founder of our modern
views on coordination chemistry. This Nobel prizewinning chemist went so
far as to fail the maths component of his university matriculation examination.
He then went on to avoid the use of mathematical equations in all of his
published work. Yet look at what he contributed to science.

Given these examples, why does maths today have such a stranglehold
in the training, selection and perception of scientists? But I can not help
thinking that there is a sort of syrup-of-figs view of what science ought
to be about. Science students are expected to swallow nasty stuff without
question on the grounds that it is good for them. When they grow up, it
is the same. If they cannot bring themselves to take the nasty stuff, they
feel bound to apologise for the fact, and to feel as though they are unworthy
trespassers in the noble field of true science.

Of course, I am not saying that advanced mathematics is irrelevant to
all science. Clearly there are topics such as cosmology, statistical thermodynamics
or advanced engineering, that do benefit from a strong background in mathematics.
But there is also plenty of meaty science that requires only the simplest
of mathematical manipulations, if any. Mastery of such manipulations could
surely be acquired fairly simply, and seen as a tool to the development
of skill in science. This would be a considerable improvement on the current
approach, which gives the impression of being the induction rites to some
arcane religion.

I really believe that we should try to adopt a different perspective
on mathematical skills and also a more enlightened view of the true value
of descriptive science. If we did, we would have to encourage science students
to develop better communication skills. At least one highly desirable spin-off
from this would be a generation of scientists able to express scientific
ideas in a way that is comprehensible to the general public.

Closer to home (and here I must declare an interest) it would also stop
me and others like me from feeling like an interloper into science just
because my field happens to be essentially descriptive. So how about it?
Is anyone else out there who wants to join my campaign against the tyranny
of the predominantly mathematical approach to science?

John Nicholson is a principal scientific officer in a Civil Service
laboratory.

Gareth Price, Melanie Daw, Nicholas Newcombe and Paul Smith at the University
of Bath attempted to use ultrasound to turn a variety of monomers into polymers.
They used an ultrasound source operating at a frequency of 22 kilohertz.

The use of ultrasound to start or control chemical reactions is a recent
development in chemistry. The technique, known as ‘sonochemistry’, works
because as the sound waves pass through a reacting liquid they create regions
of high pressure which are close to rarefactions, regions of low pressure.
The low-pressure regions cause microbubbles, or cavities, to form, generating
forces which are strong enough to break chemical bonds.

One effect of producing cavities in pure organic liquids is that free
radicals are formed, molecular fragments with unpaired electrons. Chemists
already use such fragments, which are very reactive, to initiate the reactions
leading to the chemical synthesis of polymers. And they have long wondered
if it might be possible to use ultrasound to start the polymerisation reactions.
They have found, however, that polymers are smaller when ultrasound is used,
because the forces around the bubbles are sufficiently strong to break the
bonds in the molecules.

Price and his colleagues have managed to make polymers from styrene,
methyl methacrylate and butyl methacrylate, as well as polymers containing
two of these different monomers. Their polymers are different from those
formed by more conventional means. For example, the polymers are smaller
and vary less in size within each batch (the so-called ‘polydispersity’)
than those prepared conventionally. This may be important, because often
there are technical advantages in having samples of polymer with low polydispersities.

The conditions of polymerisation have to be carefully controlled, otherwise
the cavitation effect destroys the newly formed polymer molecules. The chemists
are confident that, given time, they will gain sufficient control over the
process to make polymers with accurately known structures and properties.

Science and technology, not to mention human civilisation, reach a point
at which existing knowledge and a particular need indicate a particular
opportunity. Under such circumstances, a number of creative thinkers tend
to make the small but necessary step of invention at more or less the same
time. The result is several wheels invented in close succession. In all
probability, as gauged by strict chronology, some wheels must be the result
of reinvention.

A key feature of the process of reinvention is that several people,
as opposed to only one, have gone through the creative act. And having done
so, they each have two important attributes: experience of creativity and
enthusiasm for their original invention. Both are vital for continuing technical
innovation. The development of any innovation in most organisations is usually
achieved through the efforts of a ‘product champion’ who cares enough about
an invention to see it through to production. There is nothing more motivating
than the invention being one’s own. ‘Not-invented-here’ is a well-known
reason for inaction on a development project and, hence, failure to exploit
a particular idea.

Repeated in-house invention of wheels by every company may be inefficient,
as assessed by some niggardly rationalistic method of accounting, but would
be more than made up for by the commitment and enthusiasm of the inventors.
If we did allow more people to reinvent the wheel, there would almost certainly
be more innovative uses found for the wheel itself.

We need to look, too, at the kind of activities we defend by saying
that we don’t want to reinvent the wheel. In science, there are usually
two: extensive consultation of the prior literature before beginning any
practical work and collaboration between companies and universities in precompetitive
research. But the reality is that both activities are very different from
carrying out the main creative task. The danger with overemphasising these
aspects of technical work is that we are so anxious to avoid reinventing
the wheel that we end up not inventing it at all.

Overall, I drew two conclusions from my thoughts on this subject. First,
I don’t think reinvention is such a bad thing because of the commitment
to innovation that it would spin off. And secondly, as Sam Goldwyn once
remarked, I think it is about time that we had some new cliches.

John Nicholson is a principal scientific officer in a Civil Service
laboratory.

All of this begs the question of whether scientists can fit into this
enterprise culture. To an extent, I suppose, they have to. ÐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s who
lack the ability to sell the potential of their research do not get any
funds. Without money, they have to turn to other means of earning a living.
Of course, the ability to sell the concept does not match the ability to
carry out good science. Selling is a skill, like any other, and not distributed
evenly throughout the population. Some people are unable to persuade anyone
to part with money, however good the product; others could sell pork pies
in Israel.

One way out of this dilemma has been to collaborate. Schemes like the
current Interdisciplinary Research Centres being set up between universities,
or the LINK scheme which seeks to bring together industrial companies and
universities in cooperative research programmes, may seem attractive because
the bigger the team the greater the chance that it may include someone with
the necessary entrepreneurial ability. Perhaps, too, when big is beautiful
the amount of skill needed is not so great.

What the current culture means for science is that there is no money
for the solo worker. If scientists such as Michael Faraday or Sir James
Dewar were alive today, they would simply not get the funding necessary
for their studies. Unless, of course, they were true entrepreneurs.

There have always been a number of genuinely self-supporting individuals
among the great names of science. Sir William Crookes (1832-1919), for example,
never held an academic appointment. From the age of 27 he supported himself
as proprietor and editor of the magazine Chemical News. It gave him suffficient
income to enable him to maintain a laboratory. There he discovered and isolated
the element thallium, and studied electrical discharge in tubes of gases
at low pressure in order to learn more about the nature of the electron.
He became extremely famous for his scientific work, earning honorary doctorates,
a knighthood and election to the Order of Merit.

Other scientists of the past also supported themselves by being entrepreneurs.
James Joule studied important topics in physical chemistry while running
the family brewery. The American chemist Leo Baekeland exploited his own
studies of phenol-formaldehyde resins in forming the General Bakelite Company
whose business was to sell these materials. He was able to continue his
studies in chemistry and ended up in the prestigious office of president
of the American Chemical Society.

In our own time, James Lovelock has also been a successful scientific
entrepreneur. He has earned his living as a solo worker and funded his own
research. His Gaia hypothesis has made a major impact on environmental science
as well as on the wider public. So it can still be done today.

More often, I am sure, if scientists are imbued with the entrepreneurial
spirit they are more likely to get involved in manufacturing specialist
scientific equipment or research chemicals. In such work careful business
management is probably more important than great scientific innovation.
For example, a chemist I heard about took voluntary redundancy from his
company to set up his own business. Admittedly, he could not run it singlehanded,
but needed to involve the rest of his family. The process they operated
was a batch one but, by scrupulous attention to quality control, they managed
to maintain the standards of the product and to minimise batch-to-batch
variations. Despite the use of hot oil in the plant, they coped well with
the COSHH regulations, and by practising modern ideas of customer care,
the family made the business prosper.

So much so that, the last I heard, they were thinking of expanding and
buying a second frier for their fish and chips.

John Nicholson is a principal scientific officer in a Civil Service
laboratory.

THE MOST violent event that a human eye can witness is the outburst
of a supernova, an explosion that nearly always completely devastates a
star. The vast majority of these occur in clusters of galaxies so remote
from our own that even the light from the nearer ones set out on its journey
towards the Earth when dinosaurs were still roaming the Earth, about 200
million years ago.

The first supernova was discovered in 1885 and was one of only two bright
enough to be seen with the naked eye. In the following 105 years, astronomers
have discovered more than 600, but many times this number must have gone
undetected. On average, at least one supernova should erupt in a galaxy
every 100 years. If we consider just the brighter galaxies, we miss many
supernovae each year.

Supernovae have great significance in our understanding of the Universe.
Some become even brighter that their parent galaxy so we can use them as
a good indicator of distance because of their great intrinsic brightness.

In the preface to the handbook, G. de Vaucouleurs tells us that in order
to understand the nature of supernovae more fully we need to discover many
more, particularly in the early stages of outburst. Sadly, the number that
has been found before reaching maximum brightness is very small. It is here
that the amateur astronomer can play an important role by searching the
nearer galaxies that the handbook describes, helped by the Supernova Search
Charts.

G. D. Thompson and J. Bryan outline the various search-patrol methods
for supernovae, both amateur and professional. They point out that the majority
of discoveries have been made photographically by the professional in an
organised search or by serendipity. They also describe the professional
computerised patrols; these still face huge technical problems and have
had little success but these systems may revolutionise the detection of
supernovae one day. There is no mention, however, of the amateur computerised
patrols that employ very short exposure photography to avoid overexposing
a galaxy’s nuclear regions.

It is this aspect of searching for supernovae where the visual observer
has a real advantage over other methods and where the amateur will greatly
benefit from Thompson and Bryan’s charts. Quite often observers detect a
bright foreground star visually against the amorphous glow of a galaxy but
unless they are familiar with this galaxy, they will treat the object as
a suspect supernova and waste much time trying to confirm it. Mistakes such
as these do not usually arise if the observer has made a sketch previously
or has a short-exposure photograph to hand.

A notable exception to this pattern is the highly successful amateur
astronomer, the Reverend Robert Evans, who is credited with a dozen and
a half confirmed discoveries. He has committed to memory the appearance
of several hundred galaxies and uses a chart only when a suspect is found.

I am surprised that the authors do not devote more space to Evans, and
to his techniques and the statistics of his searches. If they did, I suspect
they would probably dissuade many amateurs for I believe his success rate
is something like one supernova per 1100 galaxies searched.

If you are beginning to conduct a visual patrol with comparison charts,
then the initial coverage is going to be small; checking against a chart
is time consuming, but your coverage will increase as your familiarity with
the charts grows.

Thompson’s and Bryan’s 236 charts are quite novel: white stars are printed
on a black background. If you construct a light box with red background
lighting to view the charts as the authors suggest, the effect is very pleasing.
A dimmer switch can then change the appearance of the chart to suit the
view through a particular telescope.

The representation of most of the 300 plus galaxies on the 236 charts
is idealised. It is not an easy thing to achieve but here the authors excelled
– the charts are by far the best that I have seen in presentation, consistency
of limiting magnitude, scale and orientation. Many suspected supernovae,
however, turn out to be errors in comparison charts so only time will prove
Thompson and Bryan’s charts, but those that I have checked look very good
apart from very minor errors of placement.

Given the revived interest in supernovae from both professional and
amateur astronomers, I believe that these charts and the handbook will even
tually increase the detection rate of supernovae. I recom mend that those
interested obtain a copy.

John Nicholson is an astronomer at Queen Mary College, London.

There is, for example, the fascinating mismatch between cost and quality.
I call this the Inverse Law of Conference Price. Briefly, this law states
that the more expensive the conference, the lower will be the standard of
the presentations. A three-day meeting that sets you back Pounds sterling
50 is almost sure to be full of exciting high-quality science. A one-day
meeting costing Pounds sterling 400 will usually comprise a few tired old
‘review’ papers which have been rehashed from 10-year-old results by lecturers
in suspiciously smart clothes. By contrast with the excitement and stimulation
of the inexpensive conference, the apparently glossy but vacuous equivalent
stimulates nothing except the bank balance of the (usually commercial) organisers.

I’ve never seen this law in print before, but undoubtedly this finding
deserves the status of scientific law if anything does. Just look at the
conference announcements in your field; you’ll see! Next there is the problem
of where to hold the conference. I call this the Venue Paradox. In simple
terms, it may be expressed thus: How do you make the venue simultaneously
attractive enough to bring in the delegates, but not so attractive that
their paymasters think they are on holiday? Since most delegates do not
pay their own fees, it is most important that someone in their organisation,
be it company, research institute or university, approves of them going.
These keepers of the corporate purse always need convincing of the value
of a conference, and if the venue looks too good, nothing will persuade
them that what is planned is really a working conference and not a holiday.
A programme for a conference consisting of one half-hour lecture a day for
a fortnight at a Mediterranean resort will not impress, even if every lecturer
is a Nobel prizewinner.

On the other hand, you can go too far the other way. A conference comprising
three 12-hour days of lectures, with a half-hour break for lunch, set in,
say, Smethwick, is not likely to prove a success. Institutional paymasters,
no doubt, would love it; all that concentrated goodness at minimal cost.
But no potential delegate would ever apply for the funds to go. Every scientist
active in the field would suddenly find numerous compelling reasons to be
elsewhere.

So that you see this balance is critical. The Venue Paradox demonstrates
that there has to be enough of a holiday atmosphere to attract the conference-goers,
but not too much to put off the paymaster.

Just once in a while a conference happens that really changes things.
This can be a personal experience, where one individual hears a paper that
significantly alters his or her approach to a problem. Very occasionally,
it has happened to an entire field. At the famous Karlsruhe Conference in
1860, the Italian chemist Stanislao Cannizzaro presented a paper in which
he drew attention to the then-forgotten work of Avogadro which had been
published many years earlier. This suggested that equal volumes of gases
contain equal numbers of molecules, and gave a rational basis for determining
the atomic weights of the elements. By doing so, Cannizzaro resolved the
uncertainty between the terms ‘atom’ and ‘molecule’, and laid the foundation
for a proper understanding of chemical bonding. Truly, thanks to Cannizzaro,
the Karlsruhe Conference was a major landmark in the development of chemistry
as a science.

But I can’t help thinking that, in a chemistry department somewhere,
a 19th-century chemist must have been refused permission to go to the conference
by some over-zealous guardian of the university’s finance. ‘Karlsruhe? Sounds
too much like a holiday to me. I won’t let him go.’ And our poor chemist
hero would probably have gone on teaching his students that carbon has a
molar mass of 6 and that water was really HO until the day that he retired.

John Nicholson is a principal scientific officer in a Civil Service
laboratory.

As I grew up I directed my studies towards that end. After O-levels
I went into the sixth form to study the usual premedical subjects, biology,
chemistry and physics. Two important things happened to me in the sixth
form: first, I fell for chemistry in a big way, mainly under the influence
of an excellent teacher; secondly, I discovered that I lacked the ability
to get the grades demanded by medical schools. So instead, when I left school,
I went off to read chemistry. While I was doing this, I decided that there
was nothing else that I wanted to do. And now, years later, armed with a
PhD, I earn my living most enjoyably as a chemist.

Somewhere, though, I feel unhappy about this apparently accidental start
to my career. For that reason, I got myself involved in giving careers advice
to youngsters at school. I’ve become quite an old hand at it now. I’ve done
all kinds of events, from large stage-managed presentations such as the
‘Careers in Chemistry’ day at South Bank Polytechnic in London, to more
modest events in local schools, sitting at a desk and giving out leaflets
to anyone who happens by.

During these events, I have learnt a lot about many things. For a start,
there has been a profound change in the English language since I was at
school. The word ‘cool’, for example, does not seem to mean what it used
to, nor does the word ‘boring’. I have sat through some really impressive
talks on the romance and excitement of careers in chemistry and heard this
word muttered by members of the audience at periodic intervals throughout.
(Modesty forbids me from saying that I’ve given the odd address myself which
I thought was more than averagely decent, only to hear the same discouraging
accolade from some little toad or toadette in the front row.) That’s another
thing that has changed in 20 years. In my day it was the keen ones who sat
in the front row, leaving the uninterested and the immature to occupy seats
at the back. Not any more.

Just occasionally, too, I have been heckled. On one memorable occasion,
a talkative and ‘aware’ lad treated my talk more like a political speech
and saw himself as Leader of the Opposition. Not only did he continually
shout the adolescent equivalent of ‘Shame!’ at most of what I said, but
he asked some very aggressive questions at the end.

It is no better in independent schools, either. Don’t let anyone fool
you. Children in these schools use exactly the same words as the children
in comprehensives; they just pronounce them differently. And in comprehensives,
you wouldn’t get the attitude I once encountered in the senior common room
at an independent school as we drank sherry after a careers fair. The head
of chemistry came up to me and asked me which university I went to. ‘Actually
I didn’t,’ I replied truthfully. ‘I did my BSc at Kingston Polytechnic and
my PhD at South Bank Polytechnic.’ That more or less ended the conversation.
The air turned icey and he brought the interview to a close somewhat abruptly.

These days, I tend to avoid such questions. Ever since I spent a week
at a Royal Society of Chemistry summer school at Girton College, I have
languidly referred to ‘my Cambridge days’ at such venues and that seems
to get me accepted as ‘one of us’.

It is not only masters at independent schools I have learnt about since
I began doing careers work. For example, I now know that most school children
think that a chemist is someone who sells pills in a shop (no disrespect
to pharmacists), and I try to put that right early on in my talk. I also
know that being called ‘Dr’ can be confusing. I still use the title, but
rapidly make it clear that I know almost nothing about anything medical.
(Not absolutely nothing. My current research is on biomedical materials.
But near enough to nothing as far as most people are concerned.) I have
to admit that, despite, my growing experience, I can still be caught out.
Last week I was at a school in Tottenham talking about the joys of chemistry
as a career. I thought I had got it right. Plenty on the glamour end of
the career possibilities: pharmaceutical research and forensic science,
together with just the right note of informality. ‘Any questions?’ I asked
at the end. ‘Yes,’ came the reply. ‘Can you tell us where the woman from
the Body Shop is speaking? We’re in the wrong room.’

Thinking about it, perhaps there is no substitute for the unplanned
route into science, after all.

John Nicholson is a principal scientific officer in a Civil Service
laboratory