Creating a lasting legacy
Our president Professor Sir John Holman shares his thoughts on last year’s anniversary celebrations and reflects on how we can continue to promote and celebrate our community’s strength and diversity as we move into our 176th year.
During the past year it's been fascinating to see what members of the chemistry community have been up to in celebration of our 175th anniversary. Reading your stories about what you do for chemistry outside of your day-to-day work has shown the extraordinary breadth and variety of activities that our members are involved in within their communities.
A personal highlight for me was seeing our 175 faces of chemistry exhibition for the first time, at Burlington House last February. The exhibition brought home to me what an extraordinary mosaic our chemistry community is. In using our 175th anniversary to showcase diversity, we have been able to celebrate the fact that chemists are everywhere, and are all sorts of people, doing all sorts of things.
A positive influence on perceptions of chemistry
It’s important that the public understands just how diverse a field chemistry is. Our research into public attitudes to chemistry showed that the public understandably has quite a narrow view of what a chemist is. Despite this, our research also indicates a real interest from the public in finding out more about how chemistry affects them day to day. There is a real opportunity for us to widen people’s associations with chemistry and chemical scientists. Chemistry operates in the public space and as chemists we want the public to understand why chemistry is important for their lives; in effect, giving chemical scientists a licence to operate. We also need young people to appreciate what a diverse, interesting and important area chemistry is, so that they will choose to study it at school and then go on to university, or take a technical route or apprenticeship into the chemical sciences. Now, more than ever, as the UK moves to exit the European Union, we need to safeguard the future supply of people who have the skills needed for chemical science.
With 175 faces of chemistry, we started to showcase the diversity of people working across the chemical sciences and, by collecting the stories of our many members and supporters – through our 175 minutes for chemistry campaign – we underpinned that message and emphasised that this diversity goes much further than just 175 faces. We have almost 55,000 members – that’s 55,000 advocates for the chemical sciences, that stand with us and support us in our initiatives, and who we support in their career and professional development. Our community news stories are just the start of ensuring that we recognise the many things that members of our community are up to, from volunteering on committees and mentoring fellow members, to communicating chemistry through podcasts and outreach.
Celebrating diversity
What I believe those that have engaged with our anniversary celebrations have appreciated most is that we have celebrated so many aspects of diversity. I like to think of the diversity we have highlighted as a three-dimensional graph. On one axis, you have the diversity of people using chemistry, who may have any gender, come from any part of the world, have any religious faith and any sexual orientation.
On another axis, you have the diversity of things that happen because of chemistry. There are chemists making new materials, monitoring the environment, making and testing new drugs; there’s a huge diversity of spaces that chemistry operates in. And finally, on the third axis, there are the places you find chemical scientists. You find them all over the United Kingdom, in town and country, in laboratories, wading through rivers and walking on mountain tops. You find them all over the world – we have members across 124 countries.
Defined by these three axes of diversity, you have this wonderful mosaic of our chemistry community. I think that’s what our anniversary celebrations have highlighted, and what is so positive about 175 faces of chemistry and our member stories is that they celebrate diversity in all its many ways.
Continuing to tell your stories
I would like to say a personal thank you to all members of our community who have shared their stories with us in our anniversary year, through 175 faces of chemistry, 175 minutes for chemistry and #time4chem on social media.
Your stories add real colour and texture to the picture we want to build of the contribution that chemistry and chemical scientists make to society. But we know these stories don’t stop just because we’re 176 years old. These stories are happening every day, across the world, in the lives of our members.
With a much bigger focus on community news, we want to continue to collect and showcase your stories, and use the momentum from our anniversary to go on celebrating the diversity of our community.
Through our new profiles pages, online and in print, we will continue to highlight the diverse personal journeys of those working and studying in the chemical sciences.
If you’ve got a story that you’d like to share with us, we’d love to hear from you and I encourage you to get in touch with our news team using the form on the left of this page.
Diverse organisations get better answers
I see our 175 faces of chemistry as a driver for greater diversity, both in our organisation and our community. I think it’s particularly important that the diversity of our membership is reflected in the committees and groups that help us to run and govern the Royal Society of Chemistry.
Our Inclusion and Diversity Committee was established by past president, and architect of 175 faces of chemistry, Professor Lesley Yellowlees, in 2014. The committee aims to represent the diversity of our membership, as we work to champion and promote inclusivity and equality of opportunity, ensuring we make significant progress in this area. From July 2017 there will be three vacancies to serve on this committee and I strongly encourage any interested members of our community to apply.
Diverse organisations get better answers. The success of our community depends on our ability to nurture the talent of the best people, regardless of who they are or their background. Diversity is important not just because it gives you greater fairness, but because it also gives you much better solutions.
By continuing the work highlighted throughout our anniversary, I believe the strength and diversity of the chemical science community can only continue to grow.
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