Overview
To be human is to be a walking chemical reaction.
Everything that we see and feel is a chemical compound or a collection of chemical compounds put together by nature or by human ingenuity.
The breath that we take about 15 times every minute is a cocktail of chemical compounds; only one of which is extracted to nourish our individual cells and keep us going. The food that we eat, the clothes that we wear and the buildings that we construct are all made of chemicals and these chemicals are really nothing more than a bunch of atoms held together by chemical bonds. Once you understand that chemistry lies beneath everything then it becomes clear why we cannot wash out hair dye in the shower, how medicines work, what happens when we cook our food and why we rot away when our hearts stop beating. It will become clear why we do not float around as a puddle of fats, proteins, carbohydrates and genes, our very constituents, but instead walk proudly as an intact solid unit.
Published by Hodder Press, Chain Reaction brings the chemistry that is all around us vividly to life.
Woven within this narrative on the chemistry of everything is a further story about Professor Dame Ijeoma Uchegbu's life; a life that began in 1960s UK, born to Nigerian parents and immediately placed in the foster care of a White family. Ijeoma describes a move to Nigeria in the 1970s, just after the end of the brutal Nigerian civil war. Transported to a barely-there town in south east Nigeria to live with a population traumatised by a proximity to fear, starvation and death. A quest for a science career sees Ijeoma back in the UK as a single mother of three children studying for a PhD, where she ends up designing medicines to tackle blindness.
"Nowhere have I seen chemistry described so lucidly, comprehensively and fun.” - Jim Al-Khalili, author of The World According to Physics
Join us to hear Ijeoma in conversation with John Naughton, Emeritus Professor of the Public Understanding of Technology at the Open University, a columnist for The Observer, and a past Vice-President of Wolfson.
Speaker
Professor Dame Ijeoma F. Uchegbu DBE, FMedSci, HonFRSC is a scientist, inventor and educator.
She is the President of Wolfson College, Cambridge and Professor of Pharmaceutical Nanoscience at University College London. She is a fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences, an honorary fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a governor on the Wellcome board, a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences Council and Chief Scientific Officer of Nanomerics Ltd, a company that she co-founded. She was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in 2025.
Ijeoma has appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Woman’s Hour and The Life Scientific. She has also been featured on BBC World Services Outlook and on BBC’s The Late Show. Her work has also been profiled in both The Guardian, and The Daily Telegraph.
Details
The event is open to all and free to attend - please book your place.
The talk will be followed by a drinks reception in the Lee Hall foyer.
Access
This event will take place in the Lee Hall which has step-free access and an accessible toilet.
Contact
If you have any questions, please contact our events team - events@wolfson.cam.ac.uk
