What if chemists borrowed a page from celebrity chefs—not for their recipes, but for their mastery of human-centered storytelling that wins over the public’s palate?
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About a year and a half ago, my mother suggested I read “The Apprentice: My Life in the Kitchen,” the memoir of Chef Jacques Pépin. His dynamic career culminated in acclaimed, public-facing culinary education efforts, and inspired me to make a major career pivot from chemistry research to undergraduate education last year. “The Apprentice” made me realize I knew nearly none of the household-name-chefs’ (who I will refer to as chefs from here on out) origin stories, other than Gordon Ramsay, whose television programming has been a favorite of mine for decades. So, during the first year of my new job, I grew into the role by day and dove into the memoirs, documentaries, and series starring Anthony Bourdain, Julia Child, Paul Liebrandt, Charlie Trotter, and Marco Pierre White by night. I quickly saw the parallels between the work and lifestyles of chefs and chemists. While the shared struggles and successes would be fun to discuss, I think we could learn a great deal more from the ways we diverge on public relations efforts. Particularly, how widely recognized chefs have mastered the ability of earning the public’s steady attention through a person-to-person communication style.
Chefs communicate to and for the public. While accolades from their industry peers often accompany commercial success, their public impact leaves the strongest taste on the palate. We know that chefs train each other in culinary schools and working kitchens, but the ones who reach and remain in the public eye past their big break are consistently serving up high-quality public education and awareness efforts. Chemists also train each other in schools, fellowships, and beyond, but I think there is a great, untapped opportunity to communicate to the public as an individual rather than as part of a greater institution or initiative in a digestible, non-inflammatory way. See one, do one, teach one… with the public, rather than our peers, being the “teach one” audience.
Intentionally and unintentionally, chefs use their personality, for better or for worse, to convey culinary information. Some chefs gain popularity for their bold, full-bodied personas, but they use their outbursts and intensity to shed light on kitchen standards. Chef Gordon Ramsay’s “Kitchen Nightmares” is not necessarily a feel-good show, but every spectacle is accompanied by an explanation of health and safety regulations or hospitality practices. The outcome of this eccentric flavor of communication is public awareness through personality-fronted communication and could help convey concepts like laboratory safety basics. Fictional programming often depicts scientists wearing stark white PPE while they work on their latest scheme to take over the world and ruin lives… in reality, those white lab coats and bunnysuits simply serve as a barrier to keep the chemists safe and the chemicals uncontaminated.
Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential” was primarily a memoir, but by weaving in culinary intel, the public got a taste of an inside scoop that had never been shared before. Similarly, the shows “Parts Unknown” and “No Reservations” were framed as “Tony” experiencing international culture and cuisine, but his charismatic personality opened the door for education about international food and customs. This let’s-learn-together flavor of communication could help convey the nuances of different chemistry sub-specialties or applications like organic vs physical vs analytical chemistry, or government vs academic vs industrial laboratories.
The HBO documentary “A Matter of Taste: Serving Up Paul Liebrandt” was filmed over the course of ten years and chronicled Chef Paul Liebrandt’s transformation from a chef trying to find his footing in the New York City culinary scene into a Michelin-starred chef. His part-memoir-part-cookbook, “To the Bone,” was a wonderful accompaniment filled with vignettes from his career and directions for executing some of his most meaningful dishes. Watching and reading about his moments of insecurity, intensity, and triumph conjured the lingering aroma of my own early career highs and lows, and ultimately encouraged me to lean into some of my percolating ideas, including this sample of my chef-style science communication deep dive. This slice-of-life flavor of communication could help convey that chemists are people with individual hopes and goals too, and our experiences are not that different from any other professional trying to create a meaningful impact through their work.
The public has made it clear that they are hungry for content centered around individuals, including what they do, why they do it, and how they do it. Why not serve them something they enjoy? Start small with bite-sized communication within your own inner circle and work your way out (non-proprietary details of course). Do your family and friends know what you actually do when you go to work? How about scientists and administrators in different departments where you work? How about your social media followers? While the odds of every chemist achieving celebrity status as an entertaining public figure are not the norm (the same goes for chefs), it is entirely within the realm of possibility to connect with non-chemists through humanizing communication, and maybe the profession and accomplishments of chemists can become more than just an acquired taste for the interested few.
