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On Tuesday 26th January at 7 pm, Ms Ridley and I accompanied about 25 of our Year 12 Chemistry students
to a West Midlands Chemistry Teacher Centre Lecture at Birmingham University, organised for sixth form
chemistry students across the city to enhance the opportunities available to them in school. It was pleasing
to see a packed lecture theatre, and a large number of sixth form students turning out on a cold night.
The lecture entitled “Discovering New Medicines: The Role of the Chemist”, was given by Dr John Snaith,
a lecturer in Organic Chemistry, whose research interests are based around the development of new
methodology for synthetic organic chemistry and its use to solve challenging problems in medicine and
biology. The research group’s current targets include key building blocks in drugs used to treat strokes and
HIV.
The lecture shared how chemistry had been particularly important in the isolation and design of many drugs
that have been in common use since the beginning of the 20th century including sulphonamide drugs,
penicillin and β‐lactams and gave us a particularly gruesome idea of how medicine would still be today if
key chemists such as Perkin and Flemming had not developed their curiosity!
Tickets for these events are collected in, and at the end of the evening one is drawn out for a prize. Our
congratulations went to Neha Sandhu, one of our pupils, who won two books about chemistry.
Dr Rose
Assistant Headteacher
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