Graduation Address: Professor Christopher Baddeley, School of Chemistry
Thursday 3 July 2025 – morning ceremony
Vice-Chancellor, special guests, colleagues and graduates.
I would like to begin by congratulating our new graduates on your wonderful achievements. I am certain that your families and friends will be feeling great pride today and that you are enormously grateful for the unfailing support you have received from them over many years. I would also like to warmly congratulate Professor Philip Rees on the award of his honorary degree.
As a chemist, I am delighted to have the opportunity to address our graduating students on behalf of the School of Chemistry. I am more daunted by the fact that there are also many Art History graduates here today as my expertise in your subject is limited to say the least.
Focusing on something that you all share: graduation today is the culmination of many years of hard work and dedication. You should never underestimate the achievement of graduating from one of the best universities in the world.
This cohort of graduating students, like others in recent years, will have had to develop considerable resilience because of the disruption and apprehension associated with the Covid-19 pandemic, which will have restricted your ability to socialise and to travel and will have affected the early days of your St Andrews experience. Thankfully, we are now able to properly enjoy events such as this graduation ceremony. I am sure that this will be a memorable day for you and for your families and friends and will greatly add to what I hope are happy memories of this unique University in this beautiful location.
Most would agree that there are massive differences between studying Chemistry and studying Art History. While chemists strive to understand how the world works, to develop their practical and problem-solving skills to provide solutions to the challenges that society faces, Art Historians gain a deep appreciation of human creativity, expression and culture and develop skills in critical analysis and in communicating their opinions. Some Chemists will make direct use of the skills acquired during many hours spent in laboratories to embark on careers in academia or the chemical industry. Those graduating with PhDs have already advanced some way along this route. Many of the Art Historians will enter careers with an art focus or where their creative skills or their cultural understanding come to the fore.
The truth is that there are many career pathways open to all of our graduating students and no limit to what you can achieve. Many St Andrews graduates have become leaders in academia, industry, finance and politics, and you have acquired the skills to help you follow in their footsteps.
A message that I would like to convey is the importance of maintaining a broad vision and not becoming too focused on one narrow discipline. There are many examples of famous scientists who excelled in the world of art and vice versa: Albert Einstein, Louis Pasteur and Leonardo da Vinci to name but three. Einstein is reported to have said that “the greatest scientists are artists as well” and a quotation attributed to da Vinci is:
“To develop a complete mind: study the science of art; study the art of science. Learn how to see. Realise that everything connects to everything else.”
Such a holistic view will be required to tackle the many social, political and economic challenges that we face in the coming years and decades. Many of these challenges seem almost intractable and many need fixing quickly. I am reminded of the history of the Apollo space programme – the first footsteps on the Moon came less than seven years after President John F Kennedy’s famous speech of September 1962 when he declared: “We choose to go to the Moon.”
It is remarkable to note that the NASA employees working in Mission Control during the Apollo 11 mission had an average age of just 28 years. Their problem-solving skills, speed of thought, fearless desire to succeed and willingness to collaborate are the kind of qualities necessary to tackle the current and future problems of our planet and it is your generation that, given appropriate resources, have the talent, expertise and powers of persuasion to identify and deliver solutions.
I would like to conclude by once more congratulating our new graduates. I am sure that you will not sit back on the fantastic achievements that we are celebrating today and that you will be proactive in shaping your future and that of the world around us.
I am confident that St Andrews will always occupy a prominent space in your hearts and that you will always be welcome here. We are very proud of your achievements, and we cannot wait to hear of your future successes.
Thank you.