Chemistry couples and punny romantic cards

First reactions

Love is a complex mix of emotions, behind which is a cocktail of hormones and neurotransmitters firing in the brain and body. And chemists, it turns out, aren’t immune to these chemical reactions and the silly things they make you do.

David Kavanaugh knows firsthand. As a chemistry master’s student in 1993, he was carrying a tray of samples for analysis when an attractive undergraduate student entered the laboratory for a tour. Next thing he knew, the tray had slipped out of his hands and glass sample vials were rolling all over the floor. But he couldn’t look away. “I was just sorta gawking,” says Kavanaugh, now a scientist at a pharmaceutical company. “My boss smacked the back of my head and told me to put my eyes back in my head.”

Luckily, the attraction was mutual. That undergrad, Karen O’Donovan, ended up taking an extra semester to add a BA in chemistry to her BS in biology. She and David have now been married 25 years.

A geeky pickup line brought another chemist couple together. “Nice wallpaper,” were Brandon Furlong’s first words to Silvana Rodrigues Pereira when, during an undergraduate computational materials chemistry lab, he noticed her laptop background was an image from Fullmetal Alchemist, a Japanese manga series Furlong also loved. “I was working, and this nerd came up behind me, speaking over my shoulder,” Rodrigues Pereira remembers with a laugh.

They became inseparable during their master’s program, and Furlong asked her out during the COVID-19 pandemic 3 years ago. They now have offices three doors down from each other as laboratory instructors at Memorial University of Newfoundland. The pair bonds over a love for cooking. “We take our measurements very seriously,” Rodrigues Pereira says.

Science fairs can also brew romance. Sparks flew between Josseline Ramos-Figueroa and Karnjit Parmar when they were volunteering at the University of Saskatchewan’s annual science fair. “We had booths right next to each other. I remember blushing when we talked between demonstrations,” Ramos-Figueroa says. Over drinks after the fair, they connected over hobbies such as astronomy, running, and music. The rest was chemistry.

After a few years of helping each other through vexing research problems, “even going through NMR [nuclear magnetic resonance] spectra together” per Ramos-Figueroa, they got a dog—named Linus after chemist Linus Pauling—and then, in August, they tied the knot.

Art and ardor

For the chemist ready to take a relationship to the next level, TheChemistTree’s science- and math-inspired valentine cards might offer the right energy. Rovena Tey started the online store after pursuing her creative passion on the side while studying the metabolism and drug resistance of yeast at McMaster University. She is now committed to her art full time.

Tey’s minimalist designs feature romantic chemistry puns such as “aloe you vera much” (showing the structure of a chemical in the plant), and “bananas over you” (with the structure of a banana flavor compound). For those with a math or physics bent, there’s “life is null without you” (with a matrix of zeros) and “I can’t resist you” (with the formula for resistance).

Science can be serious and boring, Tey tells Newscripts. “I want to present it in a different light. People find my designs funny and entertaining, then it sparks an interest and they ask questions. It’s a good way to get people interested . . . it’s science communication in a way.”

Scientists should embrace their artistic side, Tey says, and at least record their creative ideas in a journal. “It’s a good habit to express yourself. It could help you generate new research ideas.”

Please send comments and suggestions to newscripts@acs.org.