How would you describe your job to someone standing behind you in the grocery checkout line?
Just one word: I'm a writer. I've always written, but right now I happen to be writing about science and food. I just enjoy the one-word description, "writer."

What is your educational background?
I have a BS in chemistry from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, a PhD in Nuclear Chemistry from Cornell University and I did postdoctoral work at the University of Chicago.

What path did you take to get where you are now?
A very circuitous route. I've had a more-or-less traditional academic chemistry career. I did a postdoc, tried a year in industry (didn't like it), then went back to academe, first to the University of Florida then to the University of Pittsburgh, progressing through the ranks. I published and didn't perish. I had a productive academic career with some very interesting sabbaticals thrown in, including a stint as academic dean on Semester at Sea, an around-the-world academic voyage.

My last 10 years at the University of Pittsburgh, I went into administration because research support for my specialty was declining. I founded and was director of the Office of Faculty Development. But I'm always looking for something interesting to do and the University was coming up with an attractive early retirement plan, so I took the opportunity to become a full-time writer. I had always done freelance writing, but kept it hidden. Chemistry department chairmen generally look askance at writing for magazines and newspapers because it's for popular consumption.

How did you end up writing about food science? Did you recognize a need or were people asking you these types of questions and you figured there was a market for it somewhere?
That also happened fortuitously. One of my interests has always been cooking and food. When I left the University, I met my current wife, Marlene Parrish, who is a lifelong food professional. I was looking for new things to write about, and it was a natural: science combined with food. There seemed to be a vacuum out there for food science writing. I've also written books on science for the general public.

How do you decide the topics for your column? Do they all come from your readers?
Almost all of them are questions from readers. I get tons of e-mail. A lot of them aren't column material, but I answer them all anyway. I also think of things myself that I want to write about, in which case I do an essay column without a question at the beginning. When I started three years ago, I thought I would only have about three months' of material.

Part of your column is Labelingo, which highlights contradictory information on labels. Was that your idea?
Yes. Being a scientist, I'm an inveterate label reader. I'm curious about what's in prepared foods, and I frequently find crazy things on the labels. A lot of what I find are funny inconsistencies, so I don't hesitate to identify who the manufacturer is. Readers send in funny things they've found also.

Do you like to cook? What's your favorite cuisine?
I love to cook but my favorite cuisine has changed over the years. When I lived in San Diego and went into Mexico a lot. Mexican had a lot of attraction for me, especially Yucatan cuisine. I'm sick to death of Italian. I'm getting into exploring offbeat Asian things-Thai, combinations of Asian. I just came back from Spain and my wife and I are doing Spanish cooking. It's an under-appreciated cuisine..

How did you get your column published initially? How did it become syndicated?
I've been the beneficiary of a lot of luck. I had been doing freelance writing, submitting stories to magazines and newspapers, and when my wife came along, I started writing food stories. One time I had an idea and sent a query to a handful of newspapers. I didn't hear from anybody for about two months. When you send a query to a newspaper, you send clippings of your previous work. Two months later I got a call from the food editor of The Washington Post, Nancy McKeon. She said she couldn't use the idea I sent her but she liked my style in the clippings and was interested in our working together. And the column was born. There's a new food editor now, Jeanne McManus, who I'm happy to say thought the column was worth keeping.

When I started the column, the people at the Post asked if they could put it out on their wire, the Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service, where it went to some 700 newspapers around the world. A newspaper that subscribes to the service can reprint anything that appears on the wire. I wasn't compensated for this but I did it for the exposure. Then I figured I could do something with syndication myself. So I wrote up a proposal to three of the major syndicates and United Features picked it up. The syndicates get thousands of proposals per year, so the odds are formidable. Apparently, there's a market for food science out there and United Features recognized that.

Let's talk about the James Beard Award you won this year. Who nominated you? Did you know you had been nominated?
I knew that The Post had sent in my columns as an entry and my nomination was announced at a reception at the James Beard House back in March. A friend who was there telephoned me with the news. They nominate three candidates for each award and the winner's name is kept secret. The winners are announced at the big annual Beard Foundation dinner in April in New York City.

Did you expect to win? Did you find it odd that you won for a series of columns on salt?
I didn't expect to win. My wife says she knew I would, but I had no idea. I find it odd that I'm any sort of success in this field, for which I had no training and no intention of pursuing. I'm just astounded to be a nationally syndicated columnist in an area that I'm not trained in.

At the New York ceremonies I was given a big, bronze medal. I put it in my pocket; I had no intention of wearing it. But then I saw Jacques Pepin wearing his so I decided to wear mine, too.

Have you won any other awards for your writing?
The International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP) is the biggest culinary organization and they give annual awards also. They have the Bert Greene Award, which recognizes excellence in food journalism and is given in the magazine and newspaper categories. I won in the newspaper category. Their annual convention, to which my wife always goes, was in Minneapolis, and I joined her there for the award night and then flew to New York to pick up the Beard Award.

I also received an award this year from the National Society of Newspaper Columnists (NSNC) in the category of general interest columns for newspapers with a circulation of more than 100,000.

What do you consider to be your key career decisions?
Voluntary retirement was a key career decision. The biggest decision I made was to change my career. I would tell young chemists that in their education, always to keep an eye out for some other talent besides chemistry that might lie within them. It could be English, economics, or history-anything-and take the appropriate courses to have a secondary specialization for a possible second career or at least a sideline. I didn't take that advice when I was in school, but I think students today need to exercise their other talents. There's nothing wrong with excelling at one thing, but a lot of careers come out of secondary interests.

Do you foresee another career transition in your future?
Other then keeping on writing, I don't know. My book editor is already talking about the next book. I have a couple of things up my sleeve that are totally different. I love writing; I love being published; I love the idea that people are out there digesting my ideas.

What is your typical day like?
I have a very efficient home office, where I have everything I need. I never have to go to the library anymore, because the Internet has all the information anyone could want. I start working in the morning, break for lunch, and then work as long as I'm productive. I often come back after dinner.

What do you like about your job? What don't you like?
I love the feedback from readers. I call them the most wonderful readers in the world. I can't think of anything I don't like about what I'm doing.

What have been your most interesting projects or opportunities?
The biggest opportunity, of course, was the call from The Post. I also edited an encyclopedia; that was an interesting job: The Gale Encyclopedia of Science. That was soon after I left Pitt, when I was looking around for writing jobs. Gale was looking for people to write entries and I ended up being the chemistry editor. I set up the chemistry topics that the encyclopedia would cover and I edited entries from other people and wrote some myself. I enjoyed that much better than the business stuff I had been writing.

If you had it all to do over again, what would you do differently about your career?
I could regret starting this career so late in life, but I don't. I think about where my position in the writing world could be today if I had begun 20 or 30 years earlier. But I had good chemistry and administrative careers and have no regrets.

Who are your role models?
Isaac Asimov, Carl Sagan, probably others that I can't think of at the moment. I read Asimov's science fiction when I was in college and I just heard the other day he had turned out 600 books in his lifetime. I admire anyone who can explain science to the non-technically-inclined public in an enjoyable and intelligible way. There's a huge job to be done in disabusing people of the notion that science is impossible to understand. That's what my job is, and those guys did it wonderfully.

What advice do you have for others who want a job like yours?
Give career accidents a chance to happen. If it's writing, start writing as early as possible, and write about what you know. Send it out to the local newspaper or small magazines. It's terribly tough on the ego to get rejection slips for your writing. If you want to become a published writer, start sending stuff out to local newspapers: essays, op-ed pages, anything. That's how you build your collection of "clips." You'll get rejected a million times but you'll know why you were rejected and learn how to improve.

The most important thing is the English language. It can be magnificently expressive and explanatory. So I'd say to would-be writers, learn how to use it well.

Professor Wolke's FOOD 101, a light food science column, appears on alternate Wednesdays in the Food Section of The Washington Post and is nationally syndicated weekly by the United Feature Syndicate. In FOOD 101, Wolke answers readers' questions about anything and everything associated with food. No recipes, no health, or nutrition advice. Send your kitchen questions to .

Wolke is the author of What Einstein Didn't Know: Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions, What Einstein Told His Barber: More Scientific Answers to Everyday Questions, and What Einstein Told His Cook (Spring 2002). His Web site address is www.professorscience.com.

Wolke won a James Beard Award for a series of columns on salt, explaining the differences between kosher salt, sea salt, and "shaker salt" in terms of chemistry and taste. The James Beard Foundation Awards recognize culinary professionals for excellence and achievement in their field. The Foundation is dedicated to furthering the appreciation and practice of fine food and beverage.