The International Year of Chemistry throws the spotlight on to a science that has utterly transformed our lives.

The Periodic Table Printmaking Project by Jenn Schmitt, a celebration of the chemical elements in 118 images by 97 artists, is on show in an exhibition titled Elemental Matters: Artists Imagine Chemistry, which opened this month at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in Philadelphia.
'Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in the first world war, while sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water,"" the distinguished U.S. scientist Carl Sagan once observed. ""Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material called table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.""
For the rest of this year the secrets of that discipline will be honored as part of the International Year of Chemistry, a celebration launched in the U.S. this month that will include exhibitions, lectures, and competitions at universities and research centers in cities across the globe.
The aim is to highlight a science that has utterly transformed the lives of men and women and to make our world bearable with materials that have revolutionized food preparation, clothing, energy use, communication and transport.
At the same time, two milestones in the history of chemistry will be honored this year: the 100th anniversary of the award of the 1911 Nobel prize for chemistry to Madam Curie for her discovery of the elements polonium and radium, and the 350th anniversary of the publication of Robert Boyle's The Skeptical Chymist, the treatise that put the discipline on a proper, modern scientific footing.
The importance of celebrating chemistry was emphasized last week by Peter Atkins, professor of chemistry at Oxford University.
""There is nothing in the world today that is tangible that has not been contributed by chemistry,"" he told the Observer. ""It is an amazing subject but a background one. Chemists are now producing materials that perhaps do not exist anywhere else in the universe and provide people with the opportunities to build the extraordinary electronic devices that make life so interesting, as well as all the fertilizers that feed us and so on. Strip away chemistry from the world and you are back in the stone age."" Great British chemists have included Humphrey Davy, Michael Faraday and Frederick Soddy, researchers who have had a profound impact on the nation.
According to the Royal Society of Chemistry, some 20% of Britain's gross domestic product is now down to the work of chemists.
However, that legacy is now under threat, chemists warn. The nation's pharmaceutical industry is already under pressure, while the massive investment in material science research by China threatens to topple the west's dominance in the field. ""It is a serious worry,"" adds Atkins. ""Much of the industry of this country and much of the export industry of this country has been built on the backs of chemists. We need to bear that carefully in mind while we celebrate the Year of Chemistry.""
(Source: Guardian.co.uk)