It seemed appropriate that a celebration of science should begin last Friday, just days after the anniversary of one of our greatest minds was marked. But if the timing of national science week was fortunate, its juxtaposition with the death of Sir Alexander Fleming served only to emphasise how a great Scottish scientific tradition has been diminished.

It is 50 years since Fleming’s funeral took place in St Paul’s Cathedral. In those days there was no doubt of his heroic status. Indeed, his ashes were buried at the site previously used for the funerals of Lord Nelson and the Duke of Wellington. Fleming’s important discovery, the first antibiotic drug, penicillin, had saved the lives of thousands of allied soldiers during the second world war. He was knighted and had shared the Nobel prize for medicine with Sir Howard Florey and Ernst Chain, the Oxford scientists who developed his drug.

It says much for the spirit of his age that Scotland was intensely proud of this great scientist. From humble origins he had risen to global prominence via the local primary school and Kilmarnock Academy. To contemporaries he seemed the quintessential “lad o’ pairts” and his story was taught as an inspiration to pupils in Scottish schools.

Fleming was regarded as proof of this country’s pre-eminence in the sciences. Above all he was a bold symbol of the thrilling modernity of science, a discipline that seemed to offer boundless promise of health, prosperity and comfort for all.

War had created immense faith in the power of science. In the succeeding years, bright children entering Scotland’s world-renowned selective secondary schools flocked to study physics, chemistry, engineering, biology and mathematics. They did not perceive scientists as anti- social geeks. On the contrary, boys (and it was usually boys) queued to get onto university science courses.

Fleming would have approved of the rush to the sciences that accelerated in the decade after his death. But today he would be horrified by the crisis facing science and the indifference of Scottish students, despite the best efforts of the organisers of initiatives such as science week.

“There is an urgent need to improve science education in our schools,” the Scottish Science Advisory Committee (SSAC) concluded in its report Why Science Education Matters. It is a view echoed widely elsewhere.

“Some of the wow factor has gone,” admits Samuel D Jackson, a professor of chemistry at Glasgow University. “In the 1950s and 1960s we were sending people to the Moon and curing all known diseases. It looked like science could do no wrong. Then came thalidomide.”

But Jackson stresses the important point that science has also become a great deal harder in academic terms. “A lot of the stuff that students were learning in the 1950s had been around since the 1930s. Now leading-edge science gets transferred into teaching very quickly. It takes effort to keep up.”

The effects of this double whammy are reflected in the number of pupils sitting Higher grade exams in chemistry, physics and biology. Each subject has suffered a substantial reduction since the early 1990s. The number of applications to physics and chemistry degrees at Scottish universities has fallen even faster. The chemistry course at Robert Gordon University was closed in 2003. Dundee changed its degree to make it more specifically vocational.

“All the indicators are going in the wrong direction,” argues Professor Colin Pillinger of the Open University, the leader of the failed Beagle 2 mission to Mars. “We need both quality and quantity. If we don’t have the quantity the chances of getting the quality are very much diminished. You really need a lot of people doing science in order to get a proportion of Nobel prize winners in the future.”

While the SSAC insists “it is crucial that more young people become excited by science and that a larger proportion of these continue to study science at school and beyond”, the opposite is actually happening.

One reason is a desperate shortage of qualified teachers. One SSAC source said: “The shortage of science teachers in Scottish schools is very serious. By 2020 it will be critical. Older science teachers are not being replaced at anything approaching the required rate. If you have got a good degree in science there are simply too many jobs out there that pay better than teaching.”

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Brüno toned down for 15 rating