I have recently been interviewed by a company vice president for an employment. The first question asked was: Are you a humourous person? What do you think of humour? Why is humour so important to him? How is humour related to chemistry? Please advise.

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Having a sense of humor is an asset anyplace, especially in science. If you can't laugh at yourself or your failed experiments, you might not be much fun to be around in the lab.

Maybe the last person in the job you were interviewing for had no sense of humor and was completely beastly to be around. I've worked with one or two like that - no fun.

Of course, maybe the work environment is awful and if you don't laugh, you'll cry.

Maybe he thinks analytical chemistry is a joke. Our VP's do.

You could have answered (in the most serious tone possible) that you think that humour is a sin and should not be tolerated at all in the work environment, since it wastes time from the required activities. He would have looked at you as if you were a Martian, and then you could have revealed to him that it was a joke. If indeed he has humor, you would have been guaranteed to get the job.

PS: around the turn of the last century, workers were not allowed to have conversations during working hours. You focus on your work and you shut up....

Some companies realize that there are usually a multitude of candidates who are qualified - the tough part is getting one who will really fit in and stay and be productive, much more on personality than on cold, hard data. So I think it's not a strange question at all, maybe very important. Beer's law is not all abc, you know.
I actually had a high school chemistry book where, under the heading "some familiar bases", it showed a bottle of ammonium hydroxide and third (baseball reference for our UK friends).

There will be bad outcomes of experiments. That's a given. If you can shake it off and go on that's much better than brooding on the failures. Sometimes when things go really wrong you just have to see the humor in the situation to deal with it and not self-destruct.

Thanks for all these responses. Is there anyway to learn humour? I believe yes. Are you aware of any good humour books in North America? What are the titles?

From your spelling, it looks like you must be in UK; if so, forget it, you guys are just not funny. Sorry.

I think that humor is something that can't be learned. It is something that you are born with. I also believe that a good sense of humor is necessary in the work place. Nobody wants to work with a sour puss or an egg-headed geek.

egg head likes work with egg head, does not like work with flat head

watch as many Benny Hill reruns as possible...if that doesn't develop your sense of humor, it's hopeless...