Matthew Cobb

It was extremely influential.

I was very surprised at quite the huge impact it had on both sides of the Atlantic.

I've met eminent neuroscience who said, that's what got me into neuroscience.

I read that and I was inspired.

It was a huge thing in the UK.

It went to the top of the bestseller.

There was, the Times had a,

a front page article comparing him with Mozart and Shakespeare.

It's not just Newton and Mendel.

We're now talking about Mozart and Shakespeare.

It's quite extraordinary.

And in a way, I think this is telling us that something's happened.

I've got to think about this.

Who today, what individual scientist would you name today

as being somebody incredibly famous and influential.

Probably Fauci in the US would be one of the people you could talk about.

But there are very few such eminent individual scientists.

The people we think are scientists are in fact science communicators.

They may have a scientific training, but when they're talking about something, they're not talking about their work.

And there's very few books by scientists or TV programs or whatever simply about their work that have had such an influence.