Top women chemists have issued some tough-minded advice about establishing and maintaining a scientific career.`You need three things: a good boss, a good husband and a good mother,’ Australian Research Council chief executive Margaret Sheil summarises. Professor Sheil also advises cultivating a great deal of persistence, and so do Australian Academy of Science president, Suzanne Cory and Carol Robinson, an Australian who is the first female professor of chemistry at Oxford and 2010 winner of The Royal Society Davy Medal. The trio were talking about their careers to a theatre full of schoolgirls and their teachers at Parliament House this week, in honour of the International Year of Chemistry.

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