The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has awarded chemists Martyn Poliakoff, from the University of Nottingham, and Richard Catlow, from University College London and Cardiff University, this year’s David and Betty Hamburg Award for Science Diplomacy. Their consecutive tenures as foreign secretary of the Royal Society, from 2011 to 2016 and 2016 to 2021 respectively, led to new collaborations between North Korean, British and US scientists, promoted local and regional research capacity in sub-Saharan Africa, supported early-career researchers in China, Cuba, Ukraine and elsewhere, and strengthened European science ties following Brexit. Chemistry World caught up with them earlier this month at the AAAS annual meeting in Phoenix, Arizona where they received their prizes.
How do you describe yourself as a scientist?
Richard Catlow (RC): I am probably best known for my work in computational materials chemistry, but I have linked that to experimental work, especially with synchrotron and neutron facilities. A wide range of systems and materials interest me, but particularly those which are relevant to applications in renewable energy technologies and catalysis, like catalysis for low-carbon technologies.
Martyn Poliakoff (MP): I’m a chemist who has worked in a variety of areas, with a focus on green chemistry. I was an early adopter of green chemistry, particularly the use of supercritical fluids as solvents to replace organic solvents, and of flow chemistry for continuous reactions. But I’m probably better known as a science communicator, through The Periodic Table of Videos YouTube video series, which is more of a hobby than a professional activity.
Why is scientific diplomacy crucial now?
RC: It has become much more difficult than it used to be, but it is more important than ever. For example, during the Cold War we were able to have quite good scientific relations with Russia, but we cannot any longer. The Cold War was a ‘cold’ war, and now we have a ‘hot’ war.
During the Cold War we were able to have quite good scientific relations with Russia, but we cannot any longer
Richard Catlow, University College London
MP: When I was foreign secretary [of the Royal Society], it was a time of unusual peace. There are far more serious global scientific challenges now, particularly from climate change and global warming, which did not really exist as such high priority topics when Richard and I were young faculty members. These challenges do not respect national boundaries, so they cannot be addressed unilaterally by individual countries. No single nation can say the problem is solved.
Why is sustainability so important for chemistry?
MP: Over our lifetimes, Richard’s and mine, the global population has gone up three-and-a-half times. If everyone on the planet had the same standard of living as the average American, you would need the resources of four planet Earths.
Shortly after I served as foreign secretary, colleagues and I devised what we called ‘Moore’s law for chemistry’. It proposes that over five years we should halve the amount of starting materials and chemicals needed to produce a particular product. That means one would use half the solvents, half the starting materials.
What interesting sustainability initiatives are going on in this space?
MP: Both Richard and I are participants in a new UKRI project, Great British Chemicals, which was launched recently and aims to defossilise the UK chemical industry. Led by Sheffield, Newcastle and Nottingham, it brings together 10 universities and about 100 companies with the goal of making the production of chemicals in the UK as profitable as possible. The aim is to ‘defossilise’ and not ‘decarbonise’ because most chemical products contain carbon so one cannot eliminate carbon from the industry.
RC: In addition, I am a member of the UK Catalysis Hub, a UK-wide network of catalytic scientists whose current programme has a strong emphasis on catalysis for net zero and sustainability.
Tell us about your time as foreign secretary of the Royal Society
MP: The Royal Society of Chemistry, quite correctly, is focused on chemistry, whereas working for the Royal Society we were representing all UK science. That gave us an advantage because it did not seem that we were pleading the case just for chemistry or some other discipline.
RC: When travelling as foreign secretary, I also took the opportunity to do research lectures and public lectures. For example, I gave a lecture to high school kids in Buenos Aires, Argentina and then to a mixture of high schoolers and university students in both Seoul, South Korea and Beijing, China.
I was delighted by the enthusiasm for chemistry among young people right across the world
Martyn Poliakoff, University of Nottingham
Once, at the Royal Institution, I gave a lecture on electricity and magnetism to schoolchildren around 10 or 12 years old and at the end a boy stood up and said, ‘You’ve told us that you can have these positive and negative charges, but then magnets have these north and south poles – can you separate them?’ That’s one of the most profound questions in physics, and I had to say ‘No’.
MP: I also tried to give public lectures whenever I could on my Royal Society travels. I was delighted by the enthusiasm for chemistry among young people right across the world.
What have you learned at this AAAS meeting?
RC: I learned that the scientific community in the US is in a state of shock and is struggling to figure out how to cope with all the things being thrown its way. But it is vitally important to keep really strong links with them and support them in any way that we can. They are a huge component of the global scientific endeavour, and are facing things that are really very, very difficult. It’s not just funding, it’s also the present administration’s attitude of hostility of towards scientific facts which they find inconvenient.
The scientific community in the US is in a state of shock and is struggling to figure out how to cope
Richard Catlow, University College London
MP: Yes, and part of the reason why we haven’t spoken about it very much is because chemistry in the UK is also in a difficult situation – we have been faced with flat budgets for almost as long as we can remember. But that’s really problematic for the future of chemistry education in the UK because our graduates are, at least in part, the raw materials that are needed for the chemical industry.
Have you been hit by UK efforts to reduce immigration?
RC: The visa and associated costs for researchers to come to the UK are a huge imposition. They are completely unjustified and are deterring the foreign talent that we really need in the UK.
MP: The number of students from the EU has gone down enormously. We used to have a lot of EU nationals studying for PhDs in the UK, and those people have almost disappeared because the university fees, as well as visas and other costs, are really deterring EU researchers from coming to the UK. And certainly, recruitment of postdocs is now much harder than it was before Brexit, when European citizens were not required to get a visa to come and work in the UK. Since Brexit, EU students have been counted as international. While the amount that universities can charge undergraduate students is controlled for UK citizens, that is not the case for international students.
RC: I used to have a series of absolutely first-rate PhD students from other European countries, but I have had none for several years – ever since Brexit. PhD students are absolutely vital for thriving research in universities. Undergraduates from the UK now pay about £9790 annually, compared to fees of roughly £20,000 or £30,000 or sometimes more for foreign undergraduates here. And the fee for a domestic PhD student is usually between £4000 and £5000, but for overseas PhD students many universities typically charge £30,000.
Is this a particular problem for chemistry departments?
MP: Yes, PhD students are doubly important in chemistry. Quite a large proportion of the research in the field is carried out by PhD students, and they are also involved in laboratory demonstrating – a key part of training chemists. In fact, RSC accreditation requires a certain number of undergraduate lab hours.
What is on your radar for the future?
RC: The core of my work has been computational modelling, which is predictive in some areas, but I think it is possible that we can make it very widely predictive over the next five years. I am very keen to see the extent to which we can incorporate quantum computing into modelling, and to link what we’re doing with modelling even more strongly with the work employing the fantastic synchrotron and neutron sources that we have here in the UK and internationally.
Both Richard and I are also wearing badges at this meeting that say, ‘I ❤️ Technicians’
Martyn Poliakoff, University of Nottingham
I don’t think we are that far away from really predictive modelling for catalysis. It would be fantastic if we could, for example, predict product distributions in catalytic reactions accurately, as a function of temperature or pressure. That would be a huge development, and there are people doing absolutely excellent work on that here in the US. I’m also keen to expand the international collaborations with China in catalytic science, and I continue working with researchers in Africa on synchrotron radiation techniques.
MP: I want to see a group of scientists established in Africa who can identify the problems in their own countries and describe what sort of help is needed to address those challenges. They could then work with the appropriate countries in different parts of the world to bring in that needed expertise. That’s important because we outside of Africa really don’t know what the challenges are or what is really needed.
Both Richard and I are also wearing badges at this meeting that say, ‘I ❤️ Technicians’. It is very important to realise how much chemistry in the UK and the world relies on the skills of our technical staff. These are things like custom making equipment on the practical side, as well as software and hardware engineering on the computational side. So, we need to ensure a proper career structure to attract new generations of technicians to underpin a robust future for the UK’s chemical enterprise.
What advice would you give to prospective or early career chemists?
RC: I would tell them that they’re working in a discipline that is vital to solve many of the major global challenges, and they should have both commitment to and confidence in their future.
MP: I echo that but would also note that people of our generation have so far failed to solve some of these challenges. We desperately need the new ideas of the younger generation to come up with the solutions.
In addition, I would say that modern chemistry can be even more enjoyable than it was in my day because some of the really boring parts have gone. You don’t have to do very tedious analysis of mixtures or measure the molecular weight of carbon tetrachloride, for example.
RC: I agree, chemists of today have new tools that we didn’t have, like molecular graphics and molecular modelling.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
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