14 Jan 1998, The Daily Telegraph

Give us your golden nuggets

Two leading science writers launch Britain's most prestigious science writing competition, backed by BASF and The Daily Telegraph Peter Atkins suggests three rules for writing that can popularise any science, even one as tough as chemistry.

By Peter Atkins

THE Golden Nugget is a casino in Las Vegas. I was there recently, and did not find it particularly to my taste. The attitude that drives people to gamble is the antithesis of the motivation for entering science: get rich overnight without effort and at the whim of chance. How much more likely it is, when gambling, to end up poorer through the capriciousness of probability.

Science is a serious, demanding expedition of discovery with guaranteed rewards that last a lifetime. Science provides intellectual enrichment that shows up the tawdriness of the quick fixes of imposter pursuits. That is not to say science does not have its golden nuggets.

Indeed, some of the best science writing has been prospector science, where the writer pans in the river of professional knowledge and comes up with a nugget of pure gold to share with those taking the time to read. There are two types of science writing: the focused, where the goal is the nugget, and the synoptic, which surveys this most noble of humanity's pursuits and sets it in the intellectual framework of the time.

The focused-nugget approach identifies an item of fascination, shares it, and sets it in the general framework of progress. The global surveyor sees that science is slowly, cautiously and reliably adding to our awareness of the human condition, and shares that vision. There is abundant scope for both approaches. The central point is to be convinced that one has a whacking good story to tell - one that, given a receptive mind, could influence someone's attitude for a lifetime. Everyone who gives advice to aspiring science writers can come up with three golden nuggets of communication, and mine are as follows. Above all, enthrall your audience.

One of the best ways to harpoon other minds is to identify a topic that unexpectedly but delightfully illuminates the everyday. The biochemist Albert Szent-Georgi once said the art of doing science was to notice what everyone else had seen, but to think what no one else had thought. When writing about science, the aim is to add to the joy of being alive by illuminating the everyday with the piercing light of scientific insight.

The second nugget is to respect the intelligence of your audience. Given sufficient patience in both writer and reader, there is no concept of science that cannot be conveyed. Indeed, there is a special challenge in science, where the most deeply illuminating advances are being made in the realms of the most abstract.

Anyone can make a hummingbird into an attractive, absorbing and illuminating tale; the arch-challenge is to make something as abstract as string theory just as palatable. The third nugget is to write well and absorbingly. There is no better and more pleasurable preparation for enthralling writing than to read widely. The skill of articulation in literature is exactly what is needed in scientific writing.

I find that one way to achieve clear writing is to delete what previously one had admired. Destruction is an essential component of creation: erase fat, erase purple, erase unnecessary excursion. Also, listen to your editor and especially to your harshest critics: they are the true creators, the choreographers of style and exposition.

Most of my own attempts to convey science to the general public have been in chemistry, a particularly demanding subject to communicate and one that few authors take on. That is despite chemistry being the central science, the basis of a major part of industry and agriculture, and the pivot of the world's health. There is no other subject that deserves better attention from aspiring communicators. Although chemistry's kingdom is the material world, its language and concepts lie like sun-scorched bones in the Sahara of abstraction. Scratch a chemist, and out pour atoms, molecules, electrons, energy and entropy, not the full-bodied red blood of wholesome explanation.

It is hard to comprehend any explanation in chemistry without having to draw on what, to the general public, appear to be abstractions. Because of that sense of the abstract, many people - often with bad memories of lessons at school - have an almost innate sense that chemistry is something they will never understand. The public expresses its unconscious fear of chemistry by leaving books on the subject, with a few exceptions, largely unsold and unread. YOU have the opportunity to change that.

First, the public must be shown that there is a fascinating store of information that, through every material object, every pharmaceutical and cosmetic preparation, every beverage and foodstuff, every aspect of our bodies, is an aspect of chemistry's domain. Then you have to show that chemistry's explanations are easy to comprehend, that atoms and molecules are just as real as hummingbirds.

It is hard to convey science by words alone. That is particularly true of chemistry, where the action of a drug or the texture of a fabric may depend on the shape of a molecule, the arrangement of its atoms. Computer graphics are opening up whole new methods of understanding and communication in science, and a well-selected image can break through the fog of incomprehension and shine out with its message. But even if, for whatever reason, graphic images are not allowed and you have space to spend 1,000 words, verbal images can take their place.

Indeed, the challenge of verbal communication of a sharply held image is a succinct summary of what you have to do to communicate effectively. Be sure you hold the image in your mind sharp and clear; then express it as best you can in the best of words. And so we return to the true golden nugget, one of which we can all be proud.

Above all, remember that, in whatever field you choose to write, you have the opportunity, through words, to open the eyes of those who have not yet seen. You may also encourage the young into a career - or at least an attitude - that will give them an absorbing delight for life.

Peter Atkins is professor of chemistry at Oxford and fellow of Lincoln College. His books include The Periodic Kingdom and Creation Revisited.