The most prestigious award of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (RACI), the Leyton Memorial Medal, has been awarded to a Charles Sturt University (CSU) academic in the School of Biomedical Sciences at Bathurst at a presentation dinner in Melbourne on Friday 27 November.

 

Associate Professor Charles Fogliani, AM, said he was delighted and surprised to unexpectedly receive the Leighton Memorial Medal, which is awarded in recognition of eminent services to chemistry in Australia. The award commemorates the distinguished career of Dr A E Leighton as a chemist, technologist and administrator for services in Australia’s interests in war and peace.

 

“I am humbled by this unexpected honour,” Professor Fogliani said. “When one has a passion for something, as I have for chemistry, that is reward enough. To receive the Leighton Memorial Medal is extremely gratifying.”

 

Professor Fogliani commenced his career in science education when he was appointed to Mitchell College of Advanced Education, a predecessor institution of CSU, in 1970, and he made an enormous contribution to chemistry through services to the RACI and national leadership in chemical education. While he was Associate Head in the School of Nursing and Health Science and Head of the School of Public Health at CSU, Professor Fogliani was instrumental in the development of new courses, particularly in health sciences. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in the 2001 Queen’s Birthday Honours List for his services to education, particularly chemistry education.

 

The RACI citation for the Leighton Memorial Medal notes Professor Fogliani’s major contribution to chemistry education has been as Director of the Australian National Chemistry Quiz (ANCQ), a unique chemical education activity in the world that has developed into an educational tool that provides teachers and students with a state-wide and a school-wide benchmark of students’ knowledge of chemistry.

 

The ANCQ and Professor Fogliani’s contribution to it has been described by one eminent chemist, Professor David Black, as “the best thing that the Royal Australian Chemical Institute has ever done”.

 

From a modest beginning with 8 850 entries in 1982, the ANCQ has grown to more than 120 000 entries from 1 450 schools from 15 countries in 2009. The Quiz is endorsed as an international unifying event by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry during the International Year of Chemistry in 2011. The four ANCQ papers are each translated into Indonesian, Vietnamese, Tamil, Sinhalese, Thai and Chinese.

 

Professor Fogliani also paid tribute to his wife, Mary, who has attended to the administration of the ANCQ since 1985, and still is the ‘lynch pin’ in the smooth daily operations of the ANCQ.