The organic polymer chemist

Professor Andrew Holmes reflects on the role serendipitous discovery has played in his successful research career as an organic chemist and how he is now stepping into the role as President of the Australian Academy of Science.

Lab+Life Scientist: You did an undergraduate degree in chemistry, ultimately specialising in organic chemistry; do you think inquiry-based science is important for inspiring young people to pursue chemistry?

Professor Andrew Holmes: Inquiry-based learning is important. I was certainly given the opportunity to do my own experiments at school and that inspired me to be a little bit more daring and creative.

Some people give great lectures that include demonstrations - for example, a wonderful man from the UK, Colonel Brian Shaw, used to give public lectures on the way in which explosives work. Shaw would demonstrate how water undergoes a massive expansion in the space it occupies when it turns into steam by suspending a vessel containing water over a Bunsen burner. As he would start talking about a loud bang, the whole tube would blow up as the pressure increased with the heat. Then he would continue with perfect timing talking about imagining being in the vicinity of Krakatoa when a cubic kilometre of water went into the Earth’s core and the second vessel would explode. It was tremendously dramatic stuff, and that’s what inspires young people.

But you need to protect the audience - there’s a fine line between inquiry-based science and being a safe scientist.

It’s important that we don’t do things that aren’t safe, but on the other hand - and I think this is in general in life - people need to be allowed to take a calculated risk.

LLS: You pursued a PhD in London?

AH: Yes. It was the tradition in those days.

I was fortunate enough to get a Shell scholarship, which doesn’t exist anymore. Back then a lot of students from Commonwealth countries went to Britain on these PhD scholarships. We were called the Shell scholars; it was a very privileged position to be in.

I remember being interviewed as part of the final shortlist here in Victoria and the Vice Chancellor of the University of Melbourne at the time, Sir George Paton, leant forward and said ‘And where do you plan to study?’ and I said ‘University College’ and he said ‘Oxford?’ and I said ‘No, London’, and there was deathly silence because most Shell scholars went to Oxford and Cambridge.

I was going to work with Professor Franz Sondheimer in Cambridge, but the year I was awarded the scholarship I discovered he planned to move to University College London.

He was involved in the discovery of the first female oral contraceptive, which was isolated and made from a material found in the root of the Mexican yam, and helped found the company Syntex, which developed this product. And he became very rich - some people do become rich through doing science!

He and his wife loved theatre and the opera so they moved to London to have a more stimulating cultural life, in addition to his scientific life. We were all in awe of this man who was both a brilliant scientist and very rich. I joined him in London and did a PhD with him.

Professor Sondheimer had moved his research to making molecular analogues of benzene, called annulenes. My PhD was on these molecules, they were quite hard to make but they were quite interesting theoretically.

LLS: How did you end up staying in the UK for more than three decades?

AH: I didn’t expect to of course. My wife was also born in Melbourne - but we married in London - and we both thought we would return to Australia.

I did a postdoctoral year in Switzerland working on the synthesis of vitamin B12, which was a very complex molecule by the standards of the 1960s and 1970s. There was an epic contest going on to make the molecule and I was lucky enough to be in the labs in Zurich when it was finally made. There were great celebrations at the time because it was a long and interesting project where lots of new kinds of chemistry were discovered as a by-product.

Eventually I was appointed to a position at Cambridge and stayed for 32 years.

LLS: Was that where your interest in polymer research began?

AH: Having worked in Zurich on trying to make a natural product, B12, I decided I would enter the field of organic natural product synthesis; that is, making molecules that have been isolated from nature whose structure is new.

We were working on a frog venom that was extruded from the skin of Colombian poison arrow frogs; it wasn’t that poisonous but it was a really interesting molecule.

One of our synthetic intermediates accidentally turned into a polymer. We obtained some funding through the British Technology Group - a government quango, which was the only way you could exploit inventions in UK universities in the 1970s - to support a PhD student to continue the work.

We also found out that a physicist at Cambridge, Richard Friend, now Sir Richard Friend, was interested in the polyacetylene materials for use in transistors. I made contact with him and he suggested we write a joint grant proposal. He was also interested in another polymer called polyphenylene vinylene or PPV, a more stable version of the polyacetylene conducting polymers but more of a semiconductor than a conductor. It has properties a bit like silicon.

So we agreed to collaborate. I appointed an Australian, Dr Paul Burn, as a postdoc and he spent as much of his time in the physics labs as he did in the chemistry labs.

The whole project went off in a different direction when the PPV that Paul made was tested in Richard’s lab to see whether it worked in a transistor - when it was hooked up to a battery it gave out green light. We had discovered electroluminescence in polymers.

Electroluminescence simply means that material gives out light when it’s electrically stimulated by injecting charge into a thin film. And that’s what an LED is. But these were organic polymer lighting devices, which hadn’t been seen before.

LEDs were known, but they’re inorganic and made from combinations of elements such as gallium and arsenic and other materials. In fact, this year’s physics Nobel Prize was awarded for the discovery of blue LEDs. We had independently made polymers that acted as LEDs and ultimately that work has led to the development of blue polymer LEDs.

Our team accidentally discovered that there were certain types of plastics that did the same thing. This was really exciting as we believed at the beginning that we were the only ones who knew this. Patents were filed and we spent about a year doing unfettered research discovering the scope of this and filing patents left right and centre.

The first paper was published in Nature and the citations now must be up around 9000. It’s just unbelievable, the fantastic impact that research had.

LLS: It sounds very serendipitous.

AH: Yes, and that’s the most important thing! It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t taken the discoveries in various different directions, taking that calculated risk.

That’s the most exciting thing to share with people. If you keep your eyes open and a new idea emerges, run with it because it’s such a privilege to have that opportunity.

LLS: And is this research now being applied?

AH: It is now, finally.

There was a parallel technology using thin films of small molecules that are created by vapour deposition, whereas our polymers are delivered by inkjet printing.

That technology with the small molecules was owned and invented by Kodak, who licensed the technology to Pioneer. The long and short of it is that an array of small dots of red, green and blue emitters can form the basis of the flat screen TV; it is also now in a very famous Korean handheld device - the Samsung Galaxy.

If you take a microscope up to any TV screen you will see the red, green and blue dots if you look closely enough. But the eye doesn’t see the dots, it sees the image.

The polymer technology is also emerging in a flat screen television made by another Korean company, LG. It’s very close to market now, and  the first patent was filed in 1990 - so it shows how long it takes for technology like this to emerge into the marketplace.

There are three key applications for the polymer technology in this field of plastic electronics - light emission, electricity generation and transistors.

We’re currently working on applications in electricity generation, such as solar cells. If you make a thin film of these materials and they absorb light, they can give out electricity, which is what solar cells do.

We could not have believed this would have happened with organic materials when we thought the preserve of semiconductors was inorganic materials. It’s simply a matter of market opportunity now.

The advantage of using thin films of polymer materials on plastic as opposed to the traditional solar cell (silicon on glass) offers the opportunity of making low-cost, large-area flexible solar cells.

LLS: Did you set up a company when you began filing patents?

AH: Yes, and there is a whole family of patents. We founded a company called Cambridge Display Technology, which I think was the first genuine collaboration between physics and chemistry in Cambridge.

In 1989 at Cambridge University we had just two people in the technology transfer office. Although this was probably inadequate, the policy at that time was that the inventors owned the intellectual property, and we got help from a small company that helped file the patents and they got a share of the IP.

The physicists filed the first patent and the chemists came in with the second one and then we persuaded everyone that we had to form a company.

We had a contact in an intellectual property firm in London and rang up for some advice. We were very lucky to receive free IP advice from them for a year. They looked after us in the critical times and took us through to the founding of the company - it was all pro bono, so we were very lucky to have that at the start. That kicked off the company side of things, with the university cooperating and the ownership was generously divided amongst the inventors and the company and the founding investors.

The company still exists. It’s been bought by a Japanese company called Sumitomo Chemical but CDT still has its headquarters, research labs, pilot plant and fabrications labs in Cambridge.

What I’m most proud of is that we probably created one hundred jobs in the Cambridge area.

LLS: How does your experience of collaboration between university-based research and industry in the UK compare with that in Australia?

AH: Recently the UK government decided to maintain level funding for the science base despite the global financial crisis - and that’s an interesting contrast with Australia.

Britain has also made some really serious practical commitments to support translation of inventions to the marketplace because, they say, it is their future.

I think it’s also our future in Australia and that’s our biggest concern. If we don’t invest in creative research and technology to improve productivity and manufacturing, eventually we won’t have anything to sell and we won’t progress.

The statistics show that on an OECD scale we are the worst performer on engagement with industry and that’s partly because neither party has had the incentive to get together and brief one another - it’s a synergistic thing and it does need a very serious commitment to make that happen.

Some of the things we are hearing from the government at the moment suggest they are going to pay more attention to that, but it really does need sustained commitment - you’ve got to build up the capacity and then you’ve got to create the culture. There are people doing this on an individual basis here in Australia, but there are few opportunities.

The research in Australia is outstanding but people are spread rather thinly, so that makes it harder. Networking is important and we’ve got to encourage that - we are too small to compete in Australia, we’ve got to collaborate.

LLS: What is you involvement with industry like here in Australia?

AH: It’s pretty good, but it’s a shadow of the kind of industrial engagement we had in Britain and in Europe. The European Union collaboration was a real eye-opener for me because we had partnerships with all the major European countries.

We have industrial collaborations with the solar cell work we are doing in Australia, printing solar cells on plastic. We’ve had very good collaborations with a number of companies, including BlueScope Steel, because they would very much like to have integrated roofing with solar cells built into rooftops. Other partners include Innovia Security, the company that prints the base of the polymer bank notes, which arose through our CSIRO links because the CSIRO science that invented the polymer banknote went into this company.

LLS: You took up the role of President of the Australian Academy of Science in May this year. Do you have a goal for your four-year appointment?

AH: It is my ultimate ambition that regular consultation with government becomes a routine arrangement.

The President of the Royal Society said he speaks to the UK Science Minister on a weekly basis, with the Chancellor of the Exchequer (Treasurer) about once a month and the PM once or twice a year. That’s an impressive relationship that has been developed in the UK through a strong investment in people relations.

At the academy we have the privilege of being asked by government to carry out policy surveys and exercises, which allows us to inform government and the public with our policy papers. We also meet with ministers, and the opposition, and interact and share ideas with them, but we don’t have the level of relationship in science that exists in Britain. I wouldn’t say it’s existed in Britain for a long time, but in recent years it has been very strong.

One of my goals is to build a similar confidence and trust between the Australian Government and the Australian Academy of Science.

LLS: Do you think the government could have a broader approach to supporting science?

AH: I think the government does pay more attention to the researchers in particular areas, such as medical research. They rightly deserve to be heard because they are outstanding researchers. I’d like this to be on a broader basis and we are working on that.

A convincing case has been made to government that a long-term strategy is needed - and it would fit with the idea of a long-term strategy if there was an MRFF. I think everyone would agree, including medical researchers, that medical science is underpinned by the basic physical and biological sciences - you can’t get one without the other. So we need a much more holistic view of science strategy. I like to call it investing for the future.

LLS: And that involves attracting more young people to do science?

AH: Yes, certainly. If you create opportunities for young people and inspire them to do science, that will translate into older people who are interested in continuing in the field. It’s very important to start with young people; it’s where we must invest even more.

We are concerned about our educational performance in the Program for International Student Assessment test - it’s a good benchmark. Our performance in mathematics, physics and basic sciences is slipping behind our competitors, particularly in East and South-east Asia. They are getting better and we are not keeping up, and they are our economic competitors, so we need to at least maintain the OECD average.

LLS: What is some of the work the AAS is currently doing?

AH: There are two areas. We’re currently promoting opportunities for women to stay in science and to work through all the aspects of what it takes to be a scientist as well as have other things occupying you in the middle of your career. The second is to give early-career researchers the chance to get onto the ladder.

We’ve produced a couple of really good question and answer series that include basic questions explained in a language to help anyone in the community understand scientific issues. One that has been very popular is on the science of immunisation. We are revising another one at the moment on the science of climate change to bring it into alignment with current thinking because of the recent publication by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The academy also has a couple of educational programs that follow an inquiry-based learning system where children make discoveries by doing experiments under controlled conditions. In the Primary Connections program, children are encouraged to discover things by inquiry and teachers are empowered to teach - even teachers who have never taught science - by careful training and mentoring.

I sat in with a class last year with six- to eight-year-old children and they were looking at mouldy bread under a microscope. They were doing simple but challenging experiments like putting the mouldy bread in the sunlight and seeing whether the mould grew faster. And they were absolutely gung-ho about finding out the answers to these questions.

The academy has been doing this for over 10 years. It has been a very successful program heavily funded by the Australian Government but it’s penetrated two-thirds or three-quarters of Australian primary schools. In South Australia it is a mandatory component of the primary program in schools. We have a similar one for early secondary school science students (Science by Doing).

These educational programs are about creating an informed community that has the independent ability to consider scientific information and draw their own conclusions. I think that’s important. I’d be very pleased if all our decision-making was made on that basis.

It’s a great privilege to have been trained as a scientist. You don’t necessarily need to end up practising science, there are many valuable contributions people who have been trained in analytical thinking can make in other aspects of society. So there’s a benefit in having science training, just as those who have been trained in philosophy or music, we need that richness of cultural experience to make a civilised society.

Image credit: ©iStockphoto.com/kikkerdirk