Hilarious and emotional: our inaugural Chemistry Stories event

Yorkshire puddings and Niagara Falls

For the first Chemistry Stories event, eight chemists and non-chemists told their chemistry-related stories at a gathering in the University of Cambridge Chemistry Department. These included a humanising tale of a Yorkshire pudding "defeating" chemistry and the hilarious description of a final year postgrad’s desperation for results causing "Niagara Falls" in the University of Cambridge Chemistry Department.

Edwin Silvester, our news and media manager and former BBC journalist, told the story of how he went from hating science in senior school – and accusing his friend of being "too interesting to do science and maths A-levels" – to being inspired by a group of kids doing science experiments in a shopping centre – finally ending up working with us at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Try, try again

As well as the many lighthearted and funny stories, there was also an emotional element to the evening when Sarah Madden described how chemistry taught her to "try, try again" after overcoming illness and finishing her chemistry degree.

The event was conceived and coordinated by Susan Vickers, Public Engagement Executive at the Royal Society of Chemistry and the person responsible for using the PAC research to revise our public engagement strategy.

As Susan explains: "I was so impressed by the storytellers at our event; it can be daunting to tell such personal stories to an audience!

"The stories were so entertaining and great at demonstrating the human and emotional side of chemistry. Stories are more interesting, understandable, and memorable than lectures and we plan to use this approach more in the future."

Join us for the next event

The next Chemistry Stories event will be in Burlington House on Tuesday 30 May and will be packed with more chemistry accounts and anecdotes. For more information email Susan Vickers (using the "Public outreach" details on the left of this page) or check out our events page.