Mr Lancaster moved to Cambridgeshire in the 1960s to take the post of chaplain and chemistry teacher at Kimbolton School.

BBC: Cambridgeshire

Question: You did a lot of soul-searching before you gave up your career as a doctor to become a high school chemistry teacher.

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Children tend to opt for subjects which offer a better chance of high grades, says one chemistry teacher, who asked not to be named.

BBC: NEWS | UK | Magazine | What's the point of chemistry?

Before he was unexpectedly chosen to succeed Olusegun Obasanjo, Mr Yar'Adua, a former chemistry teacher, was a little-known governor of the remote northern state of Katsina.

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His chemistry teacher at school was understanding, allowing him to lark around with apparatus, just within the limit of danger and expulsion, at the back of the class.

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Before being plucked from obscurity, he had enjoyed a respectable career as a chemistry teacher (sulphur dioxide was his speciality) at a technical university in the grim industrial south.

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Mary Margaret Kennedy lately principal teacher of chemistry, Holyrood Secondary School (Glasgow) - For services to Education in Glasgow.

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Simon Mawer, a biology teacher turned novelist, and Carl Djerassi, a playwright and novelist who was once a chemistry professor.

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