Dr Peter Wothers delivers the RI Christmas Lectures
3 Dec 2012 by Evoluted New Media
We chat with Dr Peter Wothers who is delivering this year’s Royal Institution Christmas lectures. Peter, a teaching fellow at the University of Cambridge chemistry department will deliver his three lectures in a series entitled The Modern Alchemist, in front of an audience of schoolchildren in December at the Royal Institution's Faraday Lecture Theatre. The lectures will be broadcast on BBC4.
How does it feel to be asked to deliver this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures? It feels amazing! I have lectured in the theatre at the Ri a number of times over the years and without doubt it is my favourite venue – it just oozes history. I have also recently been given the ‘behind the behind the scenes tour’ of the Ri’s vault! It was a real treat to be able to hold Henry Cavendish’s original glassware. Then to read the actual set of lectures written and bound by Faraday whilst a bookbinder’s apprentice after he heard Davy lecture at the Ri really inspired a sense of honour and responsibility for delivering the Christmas Lectures. On subsequently being presented with this book, Davy offered Faraday a job in his lab and thus began the scientific career of one of Britain’s greatest minds. Who knows, perhaps the next Faraday could be sitting in the audience this year.
The series is titled The Modern Alchemist – can you tell us what the lectures will include? We’ll be looking at chemistry, which is great since the Christmas Lectures have not featured chemistry for some time now. In particular, we will be looking at how we encounter the elements in our daily lives. We’ve divided the elements into those we come across through Air, Water and Earth so have a reference back the elements of the ancient Greeks but put into a modern perspective.
You’ve carefully planned these lectures – which do you think will be your favourite to deliver? I’ve given a lot of demonstration lectures before, but I really wanted to carry out some ‘more extravagant’ experiments that I’ve never been able to do before but the Ri has now made possible. Each lecture has a few new demos that we are still trying to perfect but should be really spectacular. These demos are technically quite challenging and have involved designing new, specialised apparatus which our fantastic workshops in the chemistry labs at Cambridge have built. It should certainly be well worth the effort and I’m really looking forward to seeing the reaction of the audience – I hope they will be as thrilled as I am. I don’t think I could say which will be my favourite lecture since each should be really exciting!
What got you interested in chemistry in the first place? I first became interested in chemistry at the age of eight with my first chemistry set. This soon expanded into a pretty impressive home laboratory with Bunsen burners, balances and even a centrifuge – all thanks to the time I spent in my school holidays working for a laboratory supplier. As a teenager I was selected to represent the UK in the International Chemistry Olympiad and this is something I am still heavily involved with. That spark that first ignited my interest has never faded. The only difference now is my chemistry set is much bigger!
You’ve been called a modern alchemist – why and do you like this label? I think it’s a great title but to be fair, I think all chemists are modern alchemists. Chemistry is all about changing one substance to another, often one with far more interesting properties that can still amaze audiences. The alchemists of old were trying to do the same thing, they just didn’t know what was possible and what not.
You’re a Teaching Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge – tell us what you do here. Many departments at different universities have lecturers who really want to focus on their research. I, however, focus on the teaching of university undergraduates both in the lecture theatres, and the labs. My colleagues are always making new discoveries in their fields of work, but I feel that I am constantly making discoveries trying to see how our current understanding of chemistry all fits together. This is extremely rewarding as I feel I have the chance to get a much wider overview of the subject. I also am heavily involved in taking chemistry to wider audiences. This is, of course, one of the purposes for which the Royal Institution was founded and I am thrilled to be playing a small part in its history of inspiring our future scientists.
