6 July 1992, The Daily Telegraph

Sex and food excite the judges

Science Editor Roger Highfield announces the winners of the Young Science Writer Awards for 1992.

IT IS hard to think of two more appealing subjects to discuss than sex and food. Both were tackled by the best-placed in the nation's most prestigious science-writing competition, the winners of which we announce today. Launched in an inspirational article by Sir Martin Rees, director of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge, the fifth Young Science Writer Awards were again backed by the British Association for the Advancement of Science and The Daily Telegraph.

After much deliberation by a distinguished panel of judges at the Telegraph's Canary Wharf offices, winners in two age groups emerged. They were David Bradley of the Royal Society of Chemistry, who described how eggs lure sperm for fertilisation, and Catherine Donnelly of Assumption Grammar School, Ballynahinch, Northern Ireland, who wrote about new ways to persuade microbes to make food colouring. "Wow!" David exclaimed on hearing the news.

A 26-year-old chemistry graduate from Newcastle, he has been senior assistant editor of Chemical Communications for the past three years. His entry in an earlier contest also had a sexual theme - on the reproduction of coral - though he denies he has a fixation on the subject. "Sex gets everybody's attention," said David, who sees himself doing more popular science writing - hoping one day to occupy my seat at the Telegraph. On hearing the news, Catherine, 16, said: "Oh my gosh - that's brilliant." Her A-levels in Biology, History and English will, she hopes, help her to university and a career in clinical psychology.

The winners will be presented with their Awards by Sir David Attenborough, president of the British Association, at its annual meeting at Southampton University next month. As well as having their entries published and winning £500 each, they will go to America to attend the association's sister conference in Boston.

The £250 second prizewinners were, respectively, Jonathan Butterworth of Oxford University and Matthew Cockerill of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund. The 18 other runners-up will each receive £100 in cash, certificates of merit and subscriptions to 'New Scientist' and 'Nature'. This year the competition drew more entries than ever. Summing up the feelings of the panel, Sir David Phillips said: "These Awards are a very good exercise, and I am glad to play a role."

VERDICTS ON THE YOUNGER ENTRIES THE JUDGES represented fields ranging from physics to biology, some favouring new science, others stylish presentation. Professor Heinz Wolff, who looks for quantitative information, was one of the few judges to try a perception test put forward in the entry from Brian Wink of Reading University, though he confessed he could not make it work. In the past, favoured themes have been ozone depletion and climate change.

This, however, was the year of the buckyball, a "football-shaped" molecule that promises vast new opportunities for chemists. Though of a good standard, the majority of buckyball entries relied too heavily on secondary sources, particularly on 'New Scientist' and an excellent Horizon television programme. Some entries were rejected for being too mechanical. An unfortunate few had been overtaken by major developments in their field. Others were too ready to sidestep the science.

Overall, the standard was better than last year, although Dr Laura Garwin was disappointed by the standards of literacy and grammar. "People were not as good at organising their material as they could have been. There was a subset that was very well organised and lively but, unfortunately, a lot of the better-organised ones were stodgy," she said.

Though the main aim is to produce an entertaining read, it is important not to go too far: one entry, said Sir David Phillips, "was such exaggerated journalese it was almost a skit". Sir David was the first to nominate Catherine as overall winner of the younger category. Her name came up again and again in the first round of judging, making her favourite.

"I noted her particularly because of her age," Dr Garwin said. What impressed the judges was that none of us had heard of the work on food dyes she had investigated, so it came as real news. The runner-up in this group, Matthew Cockerill, was "excellent", according to judge Richard Fifield: "His piece came over very well."

Crisply written, it tackled the difficult subject of the molecular machinery of cell division, though the writer could have included contributions from more researchers in what has become a burgeoning field. Jo Chikwe of University College London was praised for her piece on the perception of pain by children. "A nice mixture of science and ethics," said Dr Peter Newmark. And the entry from Anne Diss, which focused on recycling potato peel at a crisp factory, was also singled out for being fun, though perhaps lacking enough science, Richard Fifield added. . . . AND THE OLDER JUDGING of the older entries saw more divisions and dissent among the judges, particularly on the way the competition brief given to the older group seemed unfair in restricting researchers to describing solely their own work.

But of all the entries, the judges returned again and again to David Bradley's lively article, which we liked for the professional way he made science entertaining and exciting. It stood out for its style alone, but Jonathan Butterworth of Oxford University almost knocked David off the perch with his account of a notoriously difficult area: particle physics and the quest to find out more about quarks. He won second prize.

We all also liked the possibilities of a diamond-coated world described by Paul May of Bristol University, although Dr Archer felt he was too optimistic. She went on to praise Tom Parker's realistic account of an uneventful - and all too typical - night in his laboratory nursing an experiment; as well as a piece on aggressive shrimps by Ashley Rowden of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory. "There is a story here - they all kill each other. It makes a good read."

There were the usual divergent views on the strengths of various articles: one of my favourite entries was subject to a furious attack by Sir David, who declared that it contained "no hypotheses, no chemistry and no thinking". This scathing criticism, however, paled in comparison with disputes triggered in previous years by the exacting observations of Prof Lewis Wolpert, who was sadly too unwell to join the final judging. Prof Wolpert's good-humoured salvoes could have prevented much of our dithering.