Communicating Chemistry from Molecules to International Efforts: An

Chemistry for Everyone

Communicating Chemistry from Molecules to International Efforts: An Interview with Peter Atkins Liberato Cardellini Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche, Università Politecnica della Marche, 60131 Ancona, Italy; [email protected]

Peter Atkins was an undergraduate at the University of Leicester, and remained there for his Ph.D. He then went to UCLA as a Harkness Fellow and came to Oxford University in 1965, where he served as a professor of chemistry and Fellow of Lincoln College; he has recently retired. His research focused on the field of theoretical chemistry, particularly magnetic resonance and the electromagnetic properties of molecules, however he tunnelled into textbook writing and his books now number nearly 60. The best known of these is Physical Chemistry (1), an important textbook in the spirit of the classic work Thermodynamics, by Gilbert Newton Lewis and Merle Randall (2). Other textbooks include Inorganic Chemistry (3), Molecular Quantum Mechanics (4), and various general chemistry texts. He also writes books on science—particularly chemistry—for the general public, such as Molecules (5) and The Periodic Kingdom (6). For this wider audience he demonstrates the importance of science; in Galileo’s Finger (7), he identifies the ten greatest ideas of science. Atkins is deeply involved in a variety of international activities, including (until the beginning of 2006) chairing the Committee on Chemistry Education of IUPAC,1 which has the task of improving chemical education worldwide, especially in developing countries, and encouraging and coordinating international efforts towards the public appreciation of chemistry. He was a member of the Councils of the Royal Society of Chemistry2 and of the Royal Institution of Great Britain,3 a member of the Bureau of IUPAC,4 and is currently a consultant to SOCED.5 Choosing Chemistry Liberato Cardellini: Why did you take up chemistry? Peter Atkins: Physics was too demanding mathematically in my high school; biology was, for a pubescent youngster in the

1950s, far too embarrassing, even though most of the ovaries we had to study were those of the frog. That left chemistry, which was well situated between difficulty and embarrassment, so that is where I drifted. For a variety of private reasons, I dropped out of high school at 15, and took my first job as a laboratory assistant. My employer was Monsanto, and I have maintained a deeply founded thankfulness to my employers who identified that I had a talent that needed to be encouraged, and persuaded me that I should go to a university. Indeed, I had already identified the importance of doing so, for at about that time the New Scientist magazine had started to be published and one of its regular series of articles consisted of biographies of scientists: it was easy to discern that the one common feature of their lives was that they had been to university. So, in due course (and to cut a rather involved story short), off I went. At this point I have to acknowledge the second great indebtedness of my career, to the University of Leicester, which— in effect—snatched me from the gutter where, had they not done so, I would have lain (metaphorically) with Oscar Wilde, merely looking at the stars. The University of Leicester encouraged me to think for myself; I stayed there (as is not uncommon in the UK) for my Ph.D. Here is my third formative influence and therefore intellectual debt. My thesis supervisor was Martyn Symons, a man of many friends and a matching number of enemies. Symons’s research field was electron paramagnetic resonance, and at the time his principal interest was in the field of radiation-damaged oxoanion salts. I stuffed a lot of nitrates and phosphates into the plumbic depths of a γ-ray source, and interpreted their electron spin resonance spectra until the cows came home. There emerged from that work my first book...but I jump ahead and will return. The fourth indebtedness I have is to Adolph Hitler, as articulated through my parents. Adolph waged war in September 1939; anticipating the future, my father (who, though unrequited in education, was nevertheless of a stern, far-seeing intellect) saw the tsunami of nationalistically inspired warfare welling over the Eastern horizon and decided to propagate his genes in case Hitler’s brutal myrmidons triumphed. Thus, I was born a canonical number of months later, which meant that not only did I not have to fight in any future war, but I avoided by a sperm’s breadth National Service, and ended the formal part of my education when jobs were two-a-penny, owing to the great expansion of higher education in the UK that took place at the beginning of the 1960s. Career Paths

Figure 1. Peter Atkins in 2004. Photograph by Jerry Moran, Studio Edelmark.

You have close relations with the United States—how did that arise? After my Ph.D. I went, like everyone in those days, to the United States. I had been awarded a Harkness Fellowship. The

© Division of Chemical Education • www.JCE.DivCHED.org • Vol. 85 No. 6 June 2008 • Journal of Chemical Education

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intention of those fellowships—which were open to any field of endeavor, was to identify future opinion formers, bring them to the USA, and provide opportunities for the holder to get to know and like the land and its people. There were about two dozen appointed each year, in fields that included ballet, politics, art, architecture, engineering, and so on. Alistair Cooke, that doyen of reporters on the American scene for British listeners, and epitomizer of what the Foundation achieved by this program, began his career as a fellow. To encourage the process of getting to know the country, each fellow was required to travel for three months, and through that, I was able to criss-cross the country. At this point I have to identify my fifth important influence. I spent my fellowship year at UCLA, working with the late physical chemist Daniel Kivelson. Dan was a highly cultivated, motivating supervisor whose intellectual strength was in formulating insightful yet simple ideas with the minimum of mathematical fuss. I consider that I borrowed from Kivelson his mode of thought, and have tried to propagate it in my teaching and writing, in which I try to encourage students to listen to an equation and to interpret what it tells the eye. My time at UCLA confirmed in me my wish to avoid the laboratory and to spend my time in theoretical research. However, the shoots of my later career were already breaking through the surface, for as I undertook my three-month tour of the country (capturing in the process about 40 states in the USA) I also drafted my first book, The Structure of Inorganic Radicals, in collaboration with Martyn Symons and published in 1967 (8). What are your opinions on the differences between chemical education in the UK and the USA? One major difference stems indirectly from the large numbers of students typically encountered in first-year classes in the USA. As a result, a professional class of chemical educators has emerged in the USA. That species is largely unknown in the UK, where we deal with much smaller numbers of students and intercalate teaching into our research rather than becoming professional university teachers per se. As a result, most innovations in chemical education—for better or worse—come from the USA; the same is true of textbooks, with a few exceptions. There is, however, a downside to dealing with large numbers of students: you need to have efficient methods of examining— multiple-choice tests, tests that are numerical rather than reflective—which can be argued to distort attitudes to education and the subject. The other difference between the USA and the UK is the orientation of courses: US courses are horizontal, UK courses are vertical. That is, in the USA courses are typically confined to a year—physical chemistry in the junior year, and so on. In the UK, all three branches proceed simultaneously. There are intellectual arguments for and against each orientation, but for an author the US approach has severe, if somewhat frivolous, disadvantages. At the end of one year a chemistry textbook is still almost pristine and not overtaken by a new edition, so it can be resold. In the UK system, after three years’ use, a textbook is dog-eared and exhausted and on the point of being overtaken by a new edition. As a result, it has a much lower second-hand value and is less likely to be resold. As a result, authors and publishers

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in the UK can be rewarded by the royalty on the sale of a new book and, as a consequence, textbooks in the UK can be less expensive than in the USA. How did you come to your present appointment at Oxford University? In those so different days, getting an academic job was more like rejecting a plethora of offers than the anxious scrabbling that marks these leaner days. My quest for a job—there was never any other thought than becoming an academic—turned out to be the only quest for employment that I have ever undertaken, and resulted in ending up in the environment that will count as the sixth principal influence on my attitudes. I started my career at Oxford University in 1965, when I was elected a fellow of Lincoln College and university lecturer in physical chemistry. The structure of appointments at Oxford is too arcane for me to explain here, but broadly speaking the university appointment is like a faculty position anywhere and the simultaneous and coterminous college appointment is largely concerned with giving guidance in the form of tutorials to the undergraduate members of that college. Lincoln College (founded in 1427; the room wherein I work was built in about 1436) has had only three physical chemistry tutors since it began to take chemists early in the 20th century: my immediate predecessor was Rex Richards, who was largely responsible for the introduction of NMR into chemistry in the UK, and his predecessor was Nevil Sidgwick, responsible himself for a lot of chemistry books (there must be something in the water—or the claret—in the college) and the early formulation of VSEPR theory. Oxford chemistry is big enough—with around 60 faculty members and taking about 180 chemistry majors a year—that it can tolerate a sprinkling of those who drift into unusual paths. Oxford also has an intellectually vigorous environment; it is professionally vigorous in the chemistry department and socially vigorous in colleges where one is immersed in a milieu that is truly broad, it being unlikely that at dinner one would find oneself sitting next to another chemist—more likely a student or professor of history, a lawyer, a linguist, or a visitor of any persuasion. But there is a deeper formative influence. An Oxford tutorial (like everything, they are evolving) consists of the tutor (me) and one or two undergraduates, lasting for an hour, and talking about whatever happens to come up but usually talking about work that the students were assigned the previous week. That there would also on occasion be a bottle of sherry at one’s elbow goes without saying: there is in Oxford no nonsense about a dry campus (indeed, there is no campus). Tutorials are intimate, student-orientated sessions that can lead to lasting friendships. I am still in touch with some of my very first students from the 1960s. Aside from the benefits to students, tutorials are formative for a potential author, as they are for any instructor, because the tutorial format confronts the instructor head on with manifest incomprehension. Thus, if a particular concept comes up in the course of the conversation, and the instructor offers an explanation, then it is easy to see the blankness of expression that gives the lie to the undergraduate’s claim at last to understand. So, one tries another approach to explaining the concept. With

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luck, or at least perseverance, one sees the light suddenly go on in the student’s eyes, and one knows that at last one has a viable explanation. That kind of responsiveness is enormously important for one’s own development as an instructor and that more global version of instructor, author. Communicating Chemistry How do you find time to write so many books? There are a variety of factors. Deep down in the foundations of explanation lies an obsession to communicate and share the insights that science alone provides. That is one reason why it is so hard to combine doing research, which thrives on obsession, with writing books, which demands obsession if the book is to be produced on time (or at all). I suppose the analogy is the near impossibility of having two wives. So, to produce a lot of books one needs to be obsessed with them. Another factor is the need to work hard. It is no use lying back and expecting the book to write itself. It means an early start each day (a habit I picked up from my time at UCLA where lectures seemed to start before dawn). I am usually at my desk by 6 am, and weekends usually begin at about 6 pm on Sunday evening. I like to pretend that I have no other interests; that isn’t really true, and I like doing most of the things that civilized people do. But I can’t abide sport, which seems a mindless and overrated waste of time. Then one needs coauthors—coauthors came rather late in my writing career (except for my very first book)—in whom one can have complete trust and who one can expect to be as committed—obsessed—as oneself. I have been very lucky with almost all mine, and books benefit enormously from frequent face-to-face discussions, which can change the whole course of the exposition as one brainstorms the resolution of a tricky point of understanding or presentation. To what do you ascribe the success of your books? That the books have largely been successful is due, I think, to one secret ingredient, which I am reluctant to share, for obvious reasons. But I will, as the encouragement into chemistry is so important for the future of humanity, and anyway the ingredient is extremely obvious. Aspiring authors should listen to their critics—specifically, they should ignore compliments and (even more) the corrupting drip of adulation, and listen to every word of adverse criticism, take it to heart, and then act on it. Why that should be so is fairly obvious, yet worth pinpointing. A critic typically has a single bee in his or her bonnet, a single pebble in his or her shoe. Commonly, critics are irked by a single infuriating omission or misconception. As a result, they have given that point a lot of thought, and they are very well worth listening to. At the end of the day, you might well think them wrong, yet you will have thought about it more deeply, would have understood and can anticipate the objections, and be in a stronger position of understanding. Even misconceptions on the side of the reviewer are a signal that a point must be addressed. I like to think that there are a few guiding principles in how I write. First, I like to think that I drive toward a complete, logical sequence in a tightly organized manner. I do not like leaps. Of course, the scale of a leap is in the eye of a beholder, and I

acknowledge that what I regard as a miniscule gap might seem to others to be an unbridgeable chasm. Second, I do think it important both to motivate each step in a mathematical derivation and to interpret the outcome. Blindfold driving through algebra is unhelpful to all but a few chemists. Third, I like to demonstrate the richness of simplicity. It seems to me that we scientists are hewers of simplicity from complexity. Our task is to show that a few simple ideas fully developed can account for great swathes of the universe. Of course, finding out that simplicity—hewing the simplicity from the awesome complexity of a laboratory bench, let alone the world outside—entails enormous effort. Similarly, tracing the trail of concatenated simplicities that blossom out as this extraordinary, wonderful, fantastic, beautiful world is also enormously difficult (think of the span from quark to consciousness), is also of awesome but we presume not insuperable difficulty. However, the difficulty of discovery and the difficulty of tracing consequences should not be allowed to obscure the simplicity that lies at the ultimate heart of being. We should, in my view, convey the view to our students and in our writing that simple ideas can be as acorns to elaborate oak trees. Fourth, I like to incorporate a lot of visual elements. There are several reasons for doing so. One is that in writing for an international audience whose first language might not be English, it is helpful to provide a lot of visual clues to the discussion and alternative paths of understanding. Secondly, a common trait of chemists, I believe, is visual comprehension, and it is important to provide comfort for that talent. I prefer to create all my illustrations myself so that there is not an artist between the scientist’s eye and my reader. In practice, it is a comfort to switch from wordsmithing a chapter to drafting illustrations. In the old days it used to be pen, ink, and stencil, and I used to steady my hand with some gentle, unjarring jazz in the background. Now, of course, everything is electronic, but I still like to draw to a relaxing ambience of music. Many students find it difficult to solve chemical problems: how do your books help here? Problem solving is one of the really difficult skills to teach as it is inductive—at least, the identification of the strategy is inductive. Once you are under way, it is straightforward, but starting is commonly the problem. First, readers need to be exposed to a logical exposition of the topic, so that they can see and appreciate its logical structure and coherence. Then they need to be exposed to a number of worked examples so that they can see how to implement what they have read. I like to set out the strategy explicitly: people are free to develop their own strategies, but I think it important for them to see how others collect their thoughts on first approaching a problem. I am currently exploring how visualizations of mathematical steps can help readers develop their understanding and problem-solving skills. Visualizations also encourage people to think about each step, and that embeds the approach more deeply in their consciousness. I always emphasize the correct use of units and their display at every stage of a calculation—it is unhelpful just to guess them and pluck them out of the air at the end. To treat units as an intrinsic part of a quantity in a calculation and to manipulate them like algebraic quantities helps to encourage logical thought, and acts as a flag for error.


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What is your opinion of the role of multimedia in the teaching of chemistry? The first point I would like to make in this connection is a plea for your sympathy. In the old days (a couple of decades ago), an author finalized his manuscript (I am using that pronoun as I have myself in mind), packed it off to his publisher, saw and checked the proofs, and was able to wash his hands of the whole project and get back to work. Now it is quite different. Because most major texts now have multimedia support, either on CD or the Web, an author’s work has now become infinite. The Web gives the opportunity for ceaseless tinkering: Adopter A wants a section on polygloscopy; adopter B wants exercises on ranklemongering, and so on. Indeed, Author C might belatedly think that he really ought to have provided a proof of a theorem (which maybe he hadn’t understood at the time, but his conscience has caught up with him). Now a book is never really finished, as the Web provides opportunities for infinite elaboration. More seriously, though, it is appropriate to consider the pedagogical role of multimedia. Of course, one can detach the question entirely from the role of printed books, but because I am writing within that context I shall take the perhaps oldfashioned attitude that multimedia is an adjunct of a book and does not have a life of its own. With that in mind (and I accept that it is old-fashioned and restrictive), the first remark I would like to make is that I like to imagine multimedia as seamlessly integrated with the text: ideally, one should not know whether you are looking at the printed page or the multimedia screen. One approximation to the homogenization of the experience is to ensure that all the illustrations in the text are in the same style as those on the screen, that the graphs look the same, and so on. There are problems with current multimedia. I shall limit myself to identifying two. One is that our students have been brought up (sometimes it seems to the exclusion of all other cultural activities) on computer games with their extraordinarily vibrant and sophisticated imagery. Most academic software looks profoundly amateurish. That, of course, is largely due to cost (I would not dare to suggest even very lightly that it has anything to do with imagination), and I am sure that our students subconsciously at least are less than enthralled by what we offer. We need to move toward the dynamism and realism of computer games. Second—much more importantly, in my view—is our current inability to examine the material that we are finding it possible to teach by using multimedia. We need a revolution in our attitude and ability to examine. Would you illustrate these ideas using one of your favorite topics, the second law of thermodynamics? I begin my lectures in Oxford to my first-year undergraduates who are being exposed to thermodynamics for the first time and have struggled over the arid wastes of the first law, by saying that in my view, no other scientific law has contributed more to the liberation of the human spirit than the second law of thermodynamics. Of course, they snigger condescendingly, but I try to explain how the second law illuminates the motive power of all change, the engine of the universe. The second law is, or at least used to be, the epitome of many things. First it was used by C. P. Snow as the litmus test

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of scientific literacy: you passed if you could quote it. (Incidentally, I am far from confident that Snow actually understood it!) I think it is still an excellent criterion, and few of my arts colleagues would pass it. Second, the second law has traditionally been regarded as a mathematical skeleton with little flesh of enlightening comprehension on its dry bones. I tried to contribute to both aspects of the law in one of the books I wrote for the Scientific American Library called, appropriately enough, The Second Law (9). I sought to show that the second law could be explicated pictorially, and that it illuminated all the workings of the world. Pursuing the logic of this attitude led to a stark view of the workings of the world (9, p 200): We are the children of chaos, and the deep structure of change is decay. At root, there is only corruption, and the unstemmable tide of chaos. Gone is purpose; all that is left is direction. This is the bleakness we have to accept as we peer deeply and dispassionately into the heart of the universe.

This view did not endear me to some, nor did an elaboration of the view in a later book, Creation Revisited (10). That criticism aside (and I have enjoyed defending it in other contexts), I think the second law is a good test of one’s ability to teach or, something similar, reveal scientific insights to the general public. For serious students of chemistry (that is, those who have to sit examinations), it is essential to know the mathematics, and particularly the rich consequences of writing dS = dqrev∙T. But throughout the derivations of the consequences, which culminate in ΔrG° = ‒RT ln K and ΔG = we, deep insight can be achieved into the thermodynamic properties of systems that interest chemists (which these days, of course, includes organisms). The second law—at least its essential qualitative concept— can also provide a beautiful vehicle for conveying to the general public the wonderful insights that science brings, for it can be presented pictorially. Surely it is right for the general public to know why anything happens at all? Global Efforts Would you tell us about your involvement with IUPAC? As well as writing books and doing the usual duties of university faculty, I have been deeply involved in the activities of IUPAC—principally (2002–2005) as the chairman of its Committee on Chemistry Education (CCE)—but also as an ex officio member of a variety of its committees, particularly its Bureau. The charge of the CCE is to help to propagate good practice in chemical education worldwide, with special reference to developing countries, and the public appreciation of chemistry. I saw this activity as extending my reach of my interests, for I write books to help students and so it is natural to want to use the international resources and penetration of IUPAC to reach out to a wider range of people—to broaden, in a sense, my spectrum of assistance with education. As a result of this activity I was given an unrivaled view of chemical education worldwide, from the countries in transition to those that regard themselves at least temporarily as developed. My committee sought to identify common problems in various regions of the world, to seek solutions appropriate to the region, and then to consider whether similar solutions might be

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applied to other regions. We were particularly concerned not to duplicate the activities of national societies but aim to bring to bear IUPAC’s international perspective; the chairmanship has now been taken over by Peter Mahaffy (the King’s University College, Edmonton), and it is fascinating to watch how he has encouraged my own shoots to flourish and has planted some remarkable seeds of his own. My perception of the state of chemical education in the world, and even more my perception of the state of the public appreciation of chemistry, is not particularly rosy. There are a few countries where chemistry is buoyant and some where there is a clear sense of emerging from a trough; but the underlying theme of attitudes is one of anxiety bordering on despair. Everyone knows the reasons: they include fear of chemistry’s bad effects on the environment (and ignorance of chemistry’s benefits), the trickle-down consequences of that perception that leads young people to think that joining the profession will diminish humanity (and not seeing that chemistry makes an enormous contribution to the quality of life), and the diminishing opportunities for employment (and failure to see that an education in chemistry has qualities well suited to employment in a wide variety of fields). There are more specific academic problems, such as the paucity of high school teachers competent to teach our subtle subject, the outdated nature of many curricula, and the almost universal lack (on Earth at least) of competence in mathematics. The committee continues to heave away at these problems in many different ways. There is a further dimension, of course. I take the view that the only chance of saving the world is to propagate education. I like to think that my activities—the books, the consequent meetings, the activities within IUPAC—are minor drops added to the leaky bucket of peace and survival. Reflections on Teaching and Practicing Chemistry How can we teachers inspire insight? By sharing our own. Instructors should burrow beneath the subject that is being presented and add their own insights, be it to the properties of a substance, the mechanism of a reaction, or a fundamental principle. Good teachers always force themselves to add more than a book can say, they should demonstrate to their students that they have a special way of understanding, a special way of interpreting, a special way of seeing how a point fits into the network of ideas that constitute science. They should interpret the structure and content of every mathematical expression so that their students can see that mathematics is a language that, once understood, deepens insight, just as a foreign language can illuminate the cultural attitudes of another group of people. Is it all worthwhile? I suppose that most of us wonder whether we have spent our careers not merely usefully but enjoyably. I do not want to belittle the extraordinary efforts that instructors put into their professional activity, which is wholly admirable; but now we are talking about another layer of activity on top of one’s normal teaching duties. I sometimes wonder whether an extra couple of hours in bed would have been better spent. However, in my more sanguine moments I reflect that I have the satisfaction of

reaching out across the world—embracing the globe—touching young minds everywhere. (Maybe, I wonder, that is why chemistry is in decline! But I dare not pursue the thought: perhaps all we authors are jointly responsible.) The driving force that impels me forward is the belief that chemistry opens our eyes to a deeper enjoyment of the world, just as understanding the structure of a picture or a piece of music deepens our pleasure. I, like all instructors, am basically in the business of opening eyes to a deeper level of reality. Perhaps I should conclude by quoting the opening sentence of one of my books, Molecules (5), which sought to share a chemist’s insight into the everyday world: “Joy may be inarticulate; but reflection is empty without understanding.” Notes 1. Committee on Chemistry Education of IUPAC. http://www. iupac.org/standing/cce.html (accessed Mar 2008). 2. Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry. http://www.rsc.org/ AboutUs/Governance/RSCCouncil/index.asp (accessed Mar 2008). 3. Council of the Royal Institution of Great Britain. http://www. rigb.org/ (accessed Mar 2008). 4. Bureau of IUPAC. http://www.iupac.org/organ/bureau.html (accessed Mar 2008). 5. �� Society Committee on Education (SOCED) of the American Chemical Society. http://portal.acs.org :80/portal/acs/corg/ content?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=PP_TRANSITIONMAIN&node_ id=1531&use_sec=false&sec_url_var=region1 (accessed Mar 2008).

Literature Cited 1. Atkins, P.; de Paula, J. Physical Chemistry, 8th ed.; Freeman: New York, 2006. 2. Lewis, G. N.; Randall, M. Thermodynamics, 2nd ed., revised by Pitzer, K. S., Brewer, L. McGraw-Hill: New York, 1961. 3. Atkins, P.; Overton, T.; Rourke, J.; Weller, M.; Armstrong, F. Inorganic Chemistry, 4th ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2006. 4. Atkins, P. W.; Friedman, R. S. Molecular Quantum Mechanics, 4th ed.; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2004. 5. Atkins, P. Atkins’ Molecules; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK, 2003. 6. Atkins, P. W. The Periodic Kingdom; Basic Books: New York, 1995. 7. Atkins, P. Galileo’s Finger. The Ten Great Ideas of Science; Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK, 2003. 8. Atkins, P. W.; Symons, M. C. R. The Structure of Inorganic Radicals; Elsevier: Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1967. 9. Atkins, P. W. The Second Law; Scientific American Books: New York, 1994. 10. Atkins, P. W. Creation Revisited; W. H. Freeman and Co.: Oxford, UK, 1992.

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Communicating Chemistry from Molecules to International Efforts: An

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