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Celebrating Alfred Bader
I very much enjoyed your article on students celebrating the 100th birthday of Alfred R. Bader (C&EN, Dec. 2/9, 2024, page 51). In 1976, in addition to it being the 200th birthday of the US, it was the 100th anniversary of the American Chemical Society. I was chair of the New Haven, Connecticut, section of ACS. We decided to have a special anniversary meeting for our annual Spouses Night. Along with the two other ACS Connecticut sections, we invited Bader to give a talk at our joint meeting. He was a wonderful speaker and discussed how he traveled in Europe buying paintings that he thought might be painted over a previous one. In the Renaissance and later period, canvas was expensive, and this was a common occurrence.
He had two projectors. One had a view of a painting he purchased, and the other showed slow and careful removal of the paint. He had discovered at least one Rembrandt in this manner, which he showed. His humor showed when he described how one time he removed a very bad modern painting to uncover a bad one underneath, and kept removing three others. Finally, underneath all this, he uncovered a very bad painting from the 1700s! I asked what chemicals he used to remove the paint. He responded, “Just acetone.”
Peter J. Whitman
Glen Mills, Pennsylvania
Chemists’ involvement in public policy
The Nov. 25 edition of C&EN addresses the importance of scientific involvement in public policy. In the letters to the editor (page 3), Olivia Harper Wilkins writes that she led a discussion with students about civic engagement as chemists, using copies of the American Chemical Society 2024 Public Policy Agenda to prompt a dialogue.
ACS director-at-large Carolyn Ribes writes in “Catalyzing Change by Advocating for Chemistry” (page 26) that “the involvement of ACS members is crucial in shaping policy discussions” and “the Act4Chemistry network offers a wealth of resources and tools to facilitate this engagement” (see cenm.ag/act4chemistry, which offers a list of important issues that should interest most scientists).
Yet science policy is not typically discussed in chemistry classrooms or at chemistry meetings. It deserves to have more emphasis and more participation in educational settings.
At the University of Missouri–St. Louis, we now have an annual lecture on science policy as part of our regular weekly chemistry seminar program. It is one way to emphasize the importance of scientific input into public policy and examine the avenues for engagement. A description of that effort can be found in the July 2024 issue of the ACS Senior Chemists newsletter at cenm.ag/sccjuly2024.
David L. Garin
Saint Louis
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