Tessa Fiorini, a former student of the University of Malta and currently working as a casual teaching assistant in the Departments of Chemistry and Built Heritage, won the international Chemistry World Science Communication Competition, organised by the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry.
Now in its second edition, the competition attracted almost 100 entries from all over the world, with the quality of the entries being described as outstanding.
The theme of the competition was 'openness in science'. Ms Fiorini’s entry was entitled 'Connecting the Dots; The Birth of Modern Chemistry through Openness'.
She based her entry on Antoine Lavoisier, who lived in the eighteenth century and is considered to be the father of modern chemistry. He debunked a false, but predominant theory at the time known as phlogiston and replaced it with oxygen theory.
Ms Fiorini’s article shows that Lavoisier actually connected the dots between the experiments of others, who were too blinded by phlogiston theory to interpret their own discoveries correctly.
The competition involved a written entry, and a pitch to a large audience of academics, press and industry representatives. The full article is to be published in the May edition of Chemistry World.