The Life Scientific

Lucie Green on the sun

03 Oct 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Lucie Green studies the sun - that giant, turbulent ball of burning gas at the centre of our solar system. Her first ambition was to become an art the...

Tracey Rogers on leopard seals and Antarctica

26 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Marine ecologist Tracey Rogers talks to Jim Al Khalili about her research on one of Antarctica's top predators. This is the leopard seal - a ten foot ...

Jennifer Doudna

19 Sep 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Jennifer Doudna's research has transformed biology. And this is not an understatement. Her work has given us the tools to edit genes more precisely th...

Tamsin Mather on what volcanic plumes reveal about our planet

30 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

To volcanologist Tamsin Mather, volcanoes are more than a natural hazard. They are 'nature's factories', belching out a rich chemical cocktail of gase...

Tim O'Brien on transient stars and science and music festivals

23 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Tim O'Brien has earned the nickname 'the awesome astrophysicist dude from Jodrell Bank' He is Professor of Astrophysics at Manchester University, and ...

Ottoline Leyser on how plants decide what to do

16 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

To the untrained eye, a plant's existence may seem rather uneventful. It spends its days rooted to the spot, seemingly at the mercy of its environment...

Fay Dowker on a new theory of space-time

09 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

For a long time Fay Dowker was mathematically precocious, but emotionally uncertain. These days, despite working in an area with few academic allies, ...

Ann Clarke on The Frozen Ark

02 May 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Tiny tree dwelling snails, partula, were so abundant across French Polynesia that garlands of partula shells would be presented to visitors to the isl...

Graham MacGregor on tackling the demons in our diet

25 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The food we eat is the greatest cause of death and illness worldwide. The main culprits - salt, sugar and fat - are now so embedded in our diet, in th...

Liz Sockett on friendly killer bacteria

18 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Liz Sockett studies an extraordinary group of predatory bacteria. Bdellovibrio may be small but they kill other bacteria with ingenious and ...

Nick Fraser on Triassic reptiles

11 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Fraser regularly travels back in time (at least in his mind) to the Triassic, a crazily inventive period in our evolutionary history that started...

Daniel Dennett on the evolution of the human brain

04 Apr 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Daniel Dennett has never been one to swallow accepted wisdom undigested. As a student he happily sought to undermine the work of his supervisor, Willa...

Alison Woollard on what she has learnt from mutant worms

28 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

C. elegans is a rather special worm, so-named for the elegant way it moves in sinusoidal curves. It's studied, and much loved, by thousands of scienti...

Alan Winfield on robot ethics

21 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Alan Winfield is the only Professor of Robot Ethics in the world. He is a voice of reason amid the growing sense of unease at the pace of progress in ...

Simon Wessely on unexplained medical syndromes

14 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Sir Simon Wessely has spent his whole career arguing that mental and physical health are inseparable and that the Cinderella status of menta...

Sean Carroll on how time and space began

07 Feb 2017

Contributed by Lukas

How did time and space begin? From the age of ten, Sean Carroll has wanted to know. He first read about the big bang model of the universe as a child....

Alison Smith on algae

31 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Think of algae and you'll probably think trouble. Algal blooms turned the diving pool green at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Smelly seaweed ruins many a trip...

Sadaf Farooqi on what makes us fat

24 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Is it true that some people put on weight more easily than others? And if so why? It's a question that's close to many of our hearts. And it's a quest...

Jan Zalasiewicz on the Age of Man

17 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

Jan Zalasiewicz, Professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester University, talks to Jim al-Khalili about the Anthropocene, the concept that humans now drive...

Michele Dougherty on Saturn

10 Jan 2017

Contributed by Lukas

The Cassini mission into deep space has witnessed raging storms, flown between Saturn's enigmatic rings and revealed seven new moons. And, thanks in n...

Neil de Grasse Tyson on Pluto

20 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

The US science superstar, Neil de Grasse Tyson grew up in the Bronx, and studied astrophysics at Harvard, Columbia and Princeton Universities before b...

Richard Morris on how we know where we are

06 Dec 2016

Contributed by Lukas

How do we know where we are? The question sounds simple enough. But there's much more to it than simply looking around. Our sense of place is embedded...

Julia Higgins on polymers

29 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Plastic Bags and the DNA in our cells are both polymers, very long molecules ubiquitous in nature and in their synthetic form, in materials like polyt...

Roger Penrose on black holes

22 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

In a career of over fifty years Sir Roger Penrose has changed the way we see the Universe. He carried out seminal research on black holes and the big ...

Lynne Boddy on Fungi

15 Nov 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Fungi are responsible for rotting fruit, crumbling brickwork and athlete's foot. They have a mouldy reputation; but it's their ability to destroy thin...

Ian Wilmut on Dolly the sheep

11 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Dolly the sheep was born near Edinburgh, twenty years ago this summer. She was the first mammal to be cloned from an adult animal, (named after Dolly ...

Frans de Waal on chimpanzees

04 Oct 2016

Contributed by Lukas

We share 99% of our DNA with the chimpanzee and the bonobo. And yet we're often surprised to learn that apes, like us, can be both kind and clever. Be...

Trevor Cox on sound

19 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Inside a Victorian sewer, with fat deposits sliding off the ceiling and disappearing down the back of his shirt, Trevor Cox had an epiphany. Listening...

Georgina Mace on threatened species

12 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Despite decades of conservation work, in zoos and in the field, the rate at which species are going extinct is speeding up. Georgina Mace has devoted ...

Faraneh Vargha-Khadem on memory

05 Jul 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Self-taught Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Faraneh Vargha-Khadem has spent decades studying children with developmental amnesia. H...

Hazel Rymer on volcanoes

27 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Hazel Rymer has journeyed closer to the centre of the earth than most, regularly peering into the turbulent, fiery world than makes up the earth's cor...

Nick Davies on cuckoos

21 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Nick Davies has been teasing apart the dark relationship between the cuckoo and the birds it tricks into bringing up its young, for more than three de...

Sheila Rowan on gravitational waves

14 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Half a century after the search for gravitational waves began, scientists confirmed that they had finally been detected in February 2016. Physicists a...

Marcus du Sautoy on mathematics

07 Jun 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Marcus du Sautoy wasn't particularly good at maths at school; but a teacher spotted his aptitude for abstract thought and he started reading, and enjo...

Lawrence Krauss on dark energy

31 May 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Lawrence Krauss has had an unusual career for a cosmologist. Not content with dreaming up theoretical models of the Universe, and writing bestselling ...

Carolyn Roberts on flood control

22 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Barely a month goes by without news of another catastrophic flood somewhere in the world, like the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 or the flooding of New O...

Helen Sharman, the first British astronaut (2016)

15 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Before Helen Sharman replied to a rather unusual radio advertisement her life was, in many ways, quite ordinary. She was working as a chemist in a swe...

Venki Ramakrishnan on ribosomes

08 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

All the information that's needed for life is written in our DNA. But how do we get from DNA code to biological reality? That's the job of the ribosom...

George Davey-Smith on health inequalities

01 Mar 2016

Contributed by Lukas

When George Davey-Smith started work as an epidemiologist, he hoped to prove that the cause of coronary disease in South Wales soon after the miner's ...

Dr Nick Lane on the origin of life on earth

23 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Dr Nick Lane is attempting to answer one of the hardest questions in science. How did life on earth begin? You might think that question had been solv...

Naomi Climer on engineering

16 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

Naomi Climer is one of the most senior British women engineers working in the communications industry, and after decades working on major projects she...

Peter Piot on tackling ebola and HIV

09 Feb 2016

Contributed by Lukas

With the Zika epidemic in Brazil being declared an international health emergency just months after the recent Ebola epidemic in West Africa, Jim Al-K...

Paul Younger on energy for the future

17 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Paul Younger, Rankine Professor of Energy Engineering at the University of Glasgow, in conversation with Jim al-Khalili in front of an audience at the...

Kathy Willis on botany

10 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

"I'm determined to prove botany is not the 'Cinderella of science'". That's what Professor Kathy Willis, Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gard...

Patrick Vallance on pharmaceuticals

03 Nov 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Patrick Vallance is something of a rare breed: a game-keeper turned poacher; an academic who's moved over into industry. And not just any industry, bu...

Robert Plomin on the genetics of intelligence

20 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Robert Plomin talks to Jim Al-Khalili about what makes some people smarter than others and why he's fed up with the genetics of intelligence...

Danielle George on electronics

13 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Danielle George is a radio frequency engineer from the University of Manchester. She designs amplifiers that have travelled everywhere, from outer spa...

Dame Carol Black on public health

06 Oct 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Carol Black was an overweight child who, aged 13, put herself on a diet. Now, as an expert advisor to the government, she's the woman behind recent ne...

Geoff Palmer on brewing

04 Aug 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Jim al-Khalili talks to botanist Geoff Palmer, the UK's only professor of brewing and distilling, about revolutionising the malting industry and his u...

EO Wilson on ants and evolution

28 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

EO Wilson has been described as the "world's most evolved biologist" and even as "the heir to Darwin". He's a passionate naturalist and an absolute wo...

Niamh Nic Daeid on forensic science

21 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic chemist Niamh Nic Daeid talks to Jim Al-Khalili about investigating fires and analysing legal highs.Her team were involved in studying the in...

Carlos Frenk on dark matter

14 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Carlos Frenk, Ogden Professor of Computational Cosmology at the University of Durham, studies the universe, but not by spending nights looking out at ...

Dorothy Bishop on language disorders

07 Jul 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Dorothy Bishop is a world-leading expert in childhood language disorders. Since the 1970s, she has been instrumental in bringing to light a little-kno...

Henry Marsh on brain surgery

30 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Neurosurgeon Henry Marsh talks to Jim Al-Khalili about slicing through thoughts, hopes and memories. Brain surgery, he says, is straightforward. It's ...

Kate Jones on bats and biodiversity

23 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Kate Jones is Professor of Ecology and Biodiversity at UCL and the Institute of Zoology. An expert in evolution and extinction, her special interest i...

Anil Seth on consciousness

16 Jun 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Anil Seth is professor of cognitive and computational neuroscience at the Sackler Centre at the University of Sussex, where he studies consciousness.H...

Susan Jebb on nutrition

21 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Fat, sugar, salt - we all know we should eat less of them, and take more exercise, but as a nation with an ever expanding waistline we are becoming in...

Nigel Shadbolt on the worldwide web

14 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Nigel Shadbolt, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at Southampton University, believes in the power of open data. With Sir Tim Berners-Lee he pe...

Stephanie Shirley on computer coding

07 Apr 2015

Contributed by Lukas

As a young woman, Stephanie Shirley worked at the Dollis Hill Research Station building computers from scratch: but she told young admirers that she w...

Jane Francis on Antarctica

31 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Just twenty years ago, the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) would not allow women to camp in Antarctica. In 2013, it appointed Jane Francis as its Direc...

Sarah-Jayne Blakemore on teenage brains

24 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Until recently, it was thought that human brain development was all over by early childhood but research in the last decade has shown that the adolesc...

Matt Taylor on the Rosetta space mission

17 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

Matt Taylor talks to Jim Al-Khalili about being in charge of the Rosetta space mission to the distant comet, 67P. It is, he says, 'the sexiest thing a...

John O'Keefe on memory

10 Mar 2015

Contributed by Lukas

John O'Keefe tells Jim Al-Khalili how winning the Nobel Prize was a bit of a double-edged sword, especially as he liked his life in the lab, before be...

Dave Goulson on bees

11 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Dave Goulson has been obsessed with animals since he was a child. He collected all kinds of creatures and went as far as doing home made tax...

Dame Sally Davies on public health

04 Nov 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jim al-Khalili talks to Professor Dame Sally Davies about being a champion for patients and a champion for women.As Chief Medical Officer, the first w...

Richard Fortey on fossils

28 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Richard Fortey found his first trilobite fossil when he was 14 years old and he spent the rest of his career discovering hundreds more, previously unk...

Margaret Boden on artificial intelligence

21 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Maggie Boden is a world authority in the field of artificial intelligence - she even has a robot named in her honour.Research Professor of Cognitive S...

Chris Toumazou on inventing medical devices

14 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

European Inventor of the Year, Chris Toumazou, reveals how his personal life and early research lie at the heart of his inventions.As Chief Scientist ...

Elspeth Garman on crystallography

07 Oct 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jim al-Khalili talks to Professor Elspeth Garman about a technique that's led to 28 Nobel Prizes in the last century.X- ray crystallography, now celeb...

Jackie Akhavan on explosives

30 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jackie Akhavan, Professor of Explosive Chemistry, tells Jim al-Khalili all about the science of explosives. She explains exactly what explosives are a...

Brian Cox on quantum mechanics

23 Sep 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Brian Cox of Manchester University describes how he gave up appearing on Top of the Pops to study quarks, quasars and quantum mechanics. Alt...

Carol Robinson on chemistry

22 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Carol Robinson describes her remarkable journey from leaving school at 16 to work as a lab technician at Pfizer, to becoming the first female Professo...

Jeremy Farrar on fighting viruses

15 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

In October 2013, Jeremy Farrar was appointed Director of the Wellcome Trust - UK's largest medical research funding charity. The Trust funded �750 m...

Zoe Shipton on fracking

08 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Zoe Shipton's fascination with rocks started when she was a child and her father took her camping on a volcano. Now a professor of geology at Strathcl...

Chris Llewellyn Smith on nuclear fusion

01 Jul 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Sir Chris Llewellyn Smith chats to Jim Al-Khalili about quarks, bosons, and running the biggest experiments in history.In the late 60s and early 70s C...

Sandy Knapp

24 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Botanist Sandy Knapp tells Jim Al Khalili about her adventures in the wilderness of South America collecting and studying many thousands of plants fro...

Chris Lintott

17 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Astronomer and Sky at Night TV presenter Chris Lintott tells Jim Al Khalili about his "Citizen Science" project of crowd-sourced astronomy, Galaxy Zoo...

Janet Hemingway

10 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Janet Hemingway, the youngest woman to ever to become a full professor in the UK, talks about her career at the frontline of the war on malaria. Whils...

Professor Sir Michael Rutter

03 Jun 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Sir Michael Rutter has been described as the most illustrious and influential psychiatric scientist of his generation. His international rep...

Julia Slingo

08 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jim Al-Khalili's guest this week is Dame Julia Slingo, the chief scientist at the Met Office. The conversation ranges from her childhood wonder of clo...

Veronica van Heyningen

01 Apr 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Charles Darwin described the eye as an 'organ of extreme perfection and complication'. How this engineering marvel of nature forms out of a few cells ...

Alf Adams

25 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Alf Adams FRS, physicist at the University of Surrey, had an idea on a beach in the mid-eighties that made the modern internet, CD and DVD players, an...

Anne Glover

18 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Anne Glover is currently one of the most influential scientists in Europe. She advises the President of the European Commission on the research behind...

Mark Miodownik

11 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Mark Miodownik's chronic interest in materials began in rather unhappy circumstances. He was stabbed in the back, with a razor, on his way to school. ...

Vikram Patel

04 Mar 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Jim Al-Khalili talks to psychiatrist Vikram Patel about the global campaign he is leading to tackle mental health. He reflects on his early career wor...

Sue Black

25 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Forensic anthropologist Professor Sue Black began her career with a Saturday job working in a butcher's shop. At the time she didn't realise that this...

Peter Higgs

18 Feb 2014

Contributed by Lukas

Peter Higgs opens up to Jim Al-Khalili, admitting that he failed to realise the full significance of the Higgs boson and to link it to the much celebr...

Wendy Hall

08 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Dame Wendy Hall, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton, has spent a career at the forefront of developments around the web an...

Jenny Graves

01 Oct 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Australian geneticist Jenny Graves discusses her life pursuing sex genes in her country's weird but wonderful fauna, the end of men and singing to her...

Sophie Scott

24 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Jim Al-Khalili talks to neuroscientist and occasional stand up comedian, Professor Sophie Scott about how she is using brain imaging techniques to rev...

Ian Stewart

17 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Ian Stewart, Professor of Maths at Warwick University, has had a dual career as a research mathematician and as a populariser. He wrote his first book...

Mike Benton

10 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Life on earth has gone through a series of mass extinctions. Mike Benton talks about his fascination with ancient life on the planet and his work on t...

Mark Lythgoe

03 Sep 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Professor Mark Lythgoe created and runs the largest medical imaging research facility in Europe - the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging at Univer...

Joanna Haigh

27 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Joanna Haigh, Professor of Atmospheric Physics at Imperial College, London, studies the influence of the sun on the earth's climate using data collect...

Russell Foster

20 Aug 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford University, is obsessed with biological clocks. He talks to Jim al-Khalili about how lig...

Elizabeth Stokoe

25 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Jim Al-Khalili talks to the social psychologist Liz Stokoe about her research as a conversation analyst. Her interest is in the nuances of everyday ch...

David Spiegelhalter

18 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Is it more reckless to eat a bacon sandwich everyday or to go skydiving? What's the chance that all children in the same family have exactly the same ...

Ewan Birney

11 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Ewan Birney talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his work on deciphering the human genome and the race to come up with the right number of genes that make us...

Athene Donald

04 Jun 2013

Contributed by Lukas

When she started her career, physicist Dame Athene Donald took a decision that shocked her colleagues. She wanted to apply the strict rules of physics...

Linda Partridge

28 May 2013

Contributed by Lukas

Will we ever be able to escape the diseases of old age?That's the aim of today's guest, Prof Dame Linda Partridge who studies the genetics of ageing. ...