1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I enjoyed chemistry in high school and did the usual teenage things with zinc dust and sulfur rockets and electroplating. However, I started my college career aimed at chemical engineering, but I was tripped up by engineering drawing, which in those days was pen and india ink — very demanding. Since I was doing well in general chemistry, I decided to switch and became a chemistry major. I truly enjoyed the lab experiences, particularly analytical and organic labs, and was then hooked.

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

I had wanted to be a jet pilot when I was an undergraduate, but a bone tumor and a broken leg ended that dream.

Now if I had to choose another profession, I would be a jazz musician. Though I have no real formal training past high school, I enjoy drumming along with CDs of the greats of jazz, traditional, blues and funk.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

Chemists have contributed tremendously to society in a myriad of ways that the public generally does not appreciate. Our contributions range from medicine to clothing to electronics. I anticipate that our contributions will continue to grow in importance as we experience changes in raw materials when petroleum feed stocks are depleted.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

This is a hypothetical question that I have not pondered before — too pragmatic, I guess. I guess my choice would be Thelonius Monk, the great jazz pianist. I would like to know how his mind worked to come up with the truly original way he played.

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

It was on August 25, 1988, according to my notebook. I carried out the reaction of 2-methoxycarbonyl-1,2-dihydroisoquinoline with benzaldehyde using NaH in DMF. The two diastereoisomeric carbonates were formed in 54:46 ratio.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

For the CD it would be a very tough choice between one of Monk’s compilations or one by Monty Alexander, another swinging pianist.

As to the book, I would probably pick a historical treatise, such as one by Stephen Ambrose on World War II.

Harry Gibson is in the Department of Chemistry at Virginia Tech and works on self-assemblies of the pseudorotaxane, rotaxane and catenane types, as well as efforts with endohedral metallofullerenes and ionic liquids.

1. What made you want to be a chemist?

I suppose family background must have helped. Growing up in the 1950s, my father was an experimental engineer in the emerging electronics industry, and I was kept well supplied with popular books on science and technology. Our local university in Newcastle also put on evening science lectures for children, and I was sometimes allowed to tag along to these with my older brother and his friends. Later on, at grammar school, a group of enlightened science teachers ran a weekly chemistry club and I still remember my excitement when experiments such as the synthesis of Bakelite and Nylon actually worked!

2. If you weren’t a chemist and could do any other job, what would it be – and why?

Maybe a writer – though of course a chemist has to be writer in any case. I’m not sure I’d have been much good at fiction, but I enjoy exploring some of the more obscure byways of Victorian and Edwardian art history, and I might possibly have made some sort of a career as a biographer of neglected painters and composers from that period.

3. How can chemists best contribute to the world at large?

I wish I knew! But I suspect that, with oil and gas now genuinely running out, the viability of nuclear fission still being debated, and fusion still a long way from being a realistic proposition, the development of new materials and processes for energy production, conversion and storage is going to be one area where chemistry really will have a major impact on society over the next twenty years.

4. Which historical figure would you most like to have dinner with – and why?

I wish I could have known Lawrence Bragg, who is I think one of the most underestimated scientists of the last century. His record of achievement, sustained over more than fifty years, is quite staggering. Not only did he discover the fundamental law governing diffraction of X-rays from crystals, but he used this insight to help understand, for the first time, the nature of literally almost everything, from simple salts through metals to silicate minerals and finally to the structures of the most complex molecules of the living cell. (He was also, by all accounts, a brilliant lecturer and a thoroughly decent chap).

5. When was the last time you did an experiment in the lab – and what was it?

I was working in the lab only yesterday (though admittedly this was the first time in about five years), doing some scouting experiments on the synthesis and crystallisation of tungsten-ruthenium molecular wires. I began my research career as an inorganic chemist, working with Bernard Aylett in London, and although most of my work now focuses on polymers, I still maintain a small but active research programme in coordination chemistry.

6. If exiled on a desert island, what one book and one CD would you take with you?

The book would be Jim Watson’s “The Double Helix”. The story raises serious ethical issues regarding scientific competition versus collaboration, but it also gives a vivid account of one of the most important discoveries ever made in science. Moreover, it really captures the atmosphere of intellectual life in England in the early 1950s – a fascinating period when science was just emerging from its wartime constraints, driven by scientists such as Bernard Lovell, John Randall and Geoffrey Wilkinson, whose early careers had all been frustrated by the war. My CD would be Vaughan Williams’ “London” symphony of 1913 – another work which supremely catches the spirit of a time and a place.

Howard Colquhoun is in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Reading and works on the design, synthesis, structural chemistry and applications of high performance aromatic polymers.