Without my friend and colleague Melanie Quin, who has died aged 66, British and European hands-on science centres would be very different places.
In the mid-1980s, the Nuffield Foundation’s interactive science project was set up as a resource and information exchange for the hands-on science centres just starting up in the UK, and Melanie was appointed as its director. She set about connecting, advising and encouraging everyone involved, providing a vital connection between existing centres and new startups, such as Satrosphere, now the Aberdeen Science Centre, and the Exploratory, in Bristol, as well as linking UK centres with more established places in the US and elsewhere. She had clearly found her calling.
Born in London, Melanie was the daughter of Vera (nee Avakumovic) a dyslexia assessor and author of Serbian origin, and Cormac Quin, a personnel officer for ICI. With her younger brother, Thomas, she was brought up in a cosmopolitan atmosphere, attending the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington and then nearby St Paul’s girls school. She went on to take a BSc in botany at Imperial College (1979) followed by an MSc, and finally a PhD researching pollen distribution (1984), during which time Melanie appeared on Thames TV weather bulletins to present pollen counts.
After university, she worked as a science editor for Hobsons Publishing before joining the Nuffield Foundation’s interactive science project. Melanie’s charm, tact and intelligence meant she was well liked and widely respected, and in 1991 she was appointed as the director of Ecsite, a new European science centre network based at the Heureka science centre in Vantaa, Finland.
The following year she joined the team developing Amsterdam’s Nemo science centre, where she stayed until 1995. Returning to the UK and Techniquest in Cardiff, Melanie took over their communicating science MSc programme (accredited by the University of Glamorgan), turning it into one of the UK’s leading courses for science communicators. The call of networking, though, was strong, and when a UK branch of Ecsite formed in 2001, Melanie returned to London to become head.
As science centres became more established, Melanie’s sense of adventure led to a change of direction, leaving the field in 2006 to teach English as a foreign language, first in Istanbul, then in Lyon.
She was a talented artist, continuing to draw throughout her busy career, loved cookery, enjoyed opera, and maintained a lively social life. As a result, in Lyon, Melanie reconnected with an old university friend, Andy Wood, and they married in 2013. Accompanying him to Sydney when work took him there, Melanie continued teaching, until she received a diagnosis of terminal liver disease last year.
She is survived by Andy and Thomas.
