Congratulations to Derek Brundish who won our spring Chem@Cam cryptic crossword prize draw and will receive a sustainable Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry travel cup.

Derek recalls his time at the department and his career in chemistry:

"Coming up to Cambridge in 1959, I must be one of a now rapidly decreasing number of chemists who remember lectures in the Pembroke Street building. It was dark and romantic; everything a fresher expected of an ancient university. In my second year I was lectured and had practicals at Lensfield Road.

Several big names in Chemistry were ending their careers; Emeleus, Norrish, Mann, Saunders and Kipping. From the latter and from reading half-subject Biochemistry I developed a keen interest in carbohydrate chemistry and went to Newcastle to study for my PhD with Jim Baddiley, one of the 'Toddlers', or the Todd Mafia as we called them.

There I discovered a new class of lipid, the glycosyl diglycerides. These are natural products present in bacteria. I happened to be working on Pneumococcus and was having trouble processing the cell walls. Normally you burst the bacteria, centrifuge to strain away the insides and are left with the cell wall, but these were sticky and wouldn’t clean up.

So I removed the fats by solvent extraction and was gobsmacked that about one third of the weight of the bacterium was lipid. This was a brand new discovery and I got eight publications in nine months! It was fortuitous but they say you make your own luck.

I went on into industry to work in many areas of organic chemistry; radio-labelling, peptide synthesis, phosphorus chemistry, asymmetric synthesis, medicinal chemistry and finally porphyrin chemistry and photodynamic therapy. All thanks to what is now the Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry.

Now I'm retired, I'm 84!"

The crossword

The chemistry crytic crossword was written by Loris Marcel, a PhD student in the Zhang lab. Loris researches how electrons move inside coral cells to determine what happens during coral bleaching and also enjoys word puzzles.

The crossword appeared in the Spring 2024 Chem@Cam (Issue 68). It is reprinted here and the solution is at the end of this article.

ACROSS

1. Need to vent... could be toxic (4)
3. Compound found in chalky nephrite cores (6)
6. Molecules derived from blended scarab meat (10)
8. Loyal mix of metals (5)
9. Clark Kent’s inner animal (4)
10. Fertiliser? Sounds like a French fake party (9)
13. Broken anthracites college (2, 9)
15. Secret ingredient in face toners (7)
16. Workplace removes coloration around collaboration (3)

DOWN

1. Unit of research assistants caught in fad (5)
2. Drink made of americium, hydrogen and cobalt (5)
4. Wipe inside of black imager (3)
5. Conducts through select rodents (9)
7. A soup of oxygen, rhodium and terbium (5)
9. Cuts less around charged molecule (7)
10. Adjust pleats for subdued colour (6)
11. Predator in Mallorca does computational quantum chemistry (4)
12. Return pad in Austria to acclimatize (5)
14. Attacking without giant (or rather small) nail (4)

Solutions