For some time now, chemistry has not had a good reputation in society. The population identifies this discipline with industries and pollution, while its positive contributions are usually ignored. This fear of chemistry may affect the opinion of society toward not only science, but also the scientific work itself. To assess the prevalence of this…

In this paper, we present our study into how teaching practices in chemistry are socially stratified under the center-suburban divide in a medium-sized city, located in the State of São Paulo, Brazil. The paper mainly draws upon the Bourdieusian-inspired concepts of institutional habitus and symbolic capital to examine how institutional discourses…

We investigated how new ideas become accepted for Nobel laureates in science. Archival data were collected for 204 Nobel laureates from 1980 to 2009 in physics, chemistry, and medicine or physiology. Acceptance was evaluated for Nobel laureates by Prize area and three key publications in the Nobel laureates' publishing careers: (a) first…

What features lead a student to choose sport science, chemistry, physics, computer science or musicology as their subject of study and the Saarland University Saarbrücken as their place of study? Empirical analysis shows that study conditions for students of chemistry, physics and music do not play an important role in selecting the place of…

'Research and teaching' is a typical response to the question, 'What are universities for?' For most people, one comes to mind more quickly than the other. Most undergraduate students will think of teaching, while PhD students will think of research. University staff will have similarly varied reactions depending on their roles. Emphasis on one or…

Raphael Meldola FRS (1849-1915) was professor of chemistry at the City and Guilds Technical College in Finsbury. He was a colleague and close friend of Silvanus Phillips Thompson FRS (1851-1916), the college principal and professor of physics. This paper follows an earlier one on Thompson and the making of his career. It is intended to illustrate…

Universalism is critical to the development of science because it promotes the objectivity of knowledge. Particularism, on the other hand, evaluates scientists' contributions based on functionally irrelevant characteristics, including personal attributes and academic origins. Previous studies found a persistent significant correlation between…

Like any good story, the Sufi tale places the listener squarely in the midst of life; that is, precisely where learning takes place. The tale pointed out that learning can be both exhilarating and painful. In college classrooms, teachers (and their students) are spared neither of these emotions when they engage in the learning process. In this…

A Higher Education Research Institute pilot study of the reputations of undergraduate departments is discussed. The intent of the study was to quantify the subjective judgments of undergraduate departmental quality and to investigate the association of ratings on different criteria and for different types of institutions. (MLW)

The correlates of average departmental annual research journal publication rates of faculty were examined in three disciplines: chemistry, history, and psychology. Variables studied included factual information about each department, faculty perceptions and ratings, and graduate students' perceptions and ratings. (Author/MLW)

The relationship between reputational ratings of graduate-level chemistry, history, and psychology departments and their faculties' scholarly productivity was examined using data from a national sample of departments in each field. Faculty reported the number of their professional articles in journals, chapters in books, scholarly book reviews,…

The quality of doctoral-level chemistry (N=145), computer science (N=58), geoscience (N=91), mathematics (N=115), physics (N=123), and statistics/biostatistics (N=64) programs at United States universities was assessed, using 16 measures. These measures focused on variables related to: program size; characteristics of graduates; reputational…