The Life Scientific
Episodes
Lord John Krebs
21 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
As a scientist, John Krebs made his name discovering that the brains of birds that store seeds are different from those that don't. But he gave up his...
Sanjeev Gupta
14 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Geologist Sanjeev Gupta talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his love of exploring exotic terrains, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the red deserts of ...
Nancy Rothwell
07 May 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell is not only one of the UK's leading brain scientists and physiologists; for the last three years Nancy Rothwell has also...
Sue Ion
26 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to the former technical director of British Nuclear Fuels, Dame Sue Ion, about a lifetime of working in the nuclear industry. Whe...
Alan Watson
19 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Alan Watson from the University of Leeds who has spent 40 years trying to unravel a mystery at the frontier of physi...
Valerie Beral
05 Feb 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to breast cancer pioneer, Professor Valerie Beral director of the cancer epidemiology unit in Oxford about her Million Women stud...
Noel Sharkey
29 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Robots probably won't take over the world, but they probably will be given ever greater responsibility. Already, robots care for the elderly in Japan,...
Annette Karmiloff-Smith
21 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Annette Karmiloff-Smith, from the Birkbeck Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development in London talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her Life Scientific. S...
Prof Robert Mair
15 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Robert Mair, professor of Civil engineering at Cambridge University about his life as an engineer in academia and industry and...
Amoret Whitaker
08 Jan 2013
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Amoret Whitaker, an entomologist at the Natural History Museum in London. Her intricate understanding of the life cycles of th...
John Gurdon
18 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Sir John Gurdon talks to Jim al-Khalili about how coming bottom of the class in science was no barrier to winning this year's Nobel Prize for Physiolo...
Jared Diamond
04 Dec 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to Jared Diamond about how his passion for the birds of Papua New Guinea overtook his medical interest in the gall bladder, and l...
Monica Grady
16 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
As the Curiosity rover ventures into previously unexplored territory on the surface of Mars and attempts to pick up and analyse rock samples for the f...
Hugh Montgomery
09 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Hugh Montgomery is an intensive care physician and researcher at University College Hospital in London. His work has taken him to the Himala...
Sir Mark Walport
02 Oct 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to the next chief scientific advisor to the government, Sir Mark Walport about how he thinks science can save the UK economy; how...
Sunetra Gupta
25 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili meets Sunetra Gupta, a scientist and novelist. As a Professor of Theoretical Epidemiology she studies infectious diseases such as flu a...
David Nutt
18 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Professor David Nutt was sacked in 2009 as the government's chief drugs adviser after criticising its decision to reclassify cannabis. He is a psychia...
Andrea Sella
11 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Andrea Sella is a science showman, whose theatrical demonstrations of chemistry are filling theatres up and down the country. But as Professor of Mate...
Richard Dawkins
04 Sep 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Richard Dawkins' first book on evolutionary biology "The Selfish Gene" was published to much acclaim and some controversy in 1976. In this interview w...
Dame Ann Dowling
28 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
A world in which planes are silent may sound like a pipe dream; but University of Cambridge engineer, Dame Ann Dowling, and her team proved it is poss...
Martin Siegert
21 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
For fifteen years, Martin Siegert has dreamt about Lake Ellsworth, a hidden lake buried beneath the Antarctic ice that's been cut off from the rest of...
Pat Wolseley
14 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to botanist, Pat Wolseley about her obsession with lichen and the environmental secrets it holds. This humble and ancient organis...
Steve Jones
07 Aug 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Steve Jones is a geneticist who says he lives life in the slow lane, studying snails. His work shows how animals adapt to the environment th...
John Pickett
12 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Professor John Pickett's research into GM crops was at the centre of a public debate last month. His experimental work has engineered insect alarm sys...
Robert May
05 Jun 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to the former chief scientific advisor, Robert May about restoring public trust in science in the wake of the BSE crisis and at t...
Barbara Sahakian
29 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain which effect our memory and understanding, and neur...
Lloyd Peck
22 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili meets British Antarctic Survey scientist Lloyd Peck and discovers giant sea spiders. They and other small animals grow far bigger than ...
Frances Ashcroft
15 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to this year's winner of the L'Oreal -UNESCO Woman in Science award, Frances Ashcroft.After decades spent studying the link betwe...
James Lovelock
08 May 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to James Lovelock about elocution lessons, defrosting hamsters and his grand theory of planet earth, Gaia. The idea that from the...
Angela Gallop
27 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to Angela Gallop, the scientist who provided the vital forensic evidence in the recent re-trial for the murder of Stephen Lawrenc...
Tejinder Virdee
20 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim talks CERN physicist, Tejinder Virdee about the search for the elusive Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle". Last December, scientists wo...
John Lawton
13 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to environmental scientist John Lawton about making space for nature. A keen birdwatcher from the age of 7, John describes his st...
Martin Rees
06 Mar 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim enters the multiverse with Astronomer Royal Martin Rees. He's worked on the big bang, black holes and the formation of galaxies but what he would ...
Iain Chalmers
28 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili talks to the pioneering health services researcher, Iain Chalmers, who was one of the founders of the Cochrane Collaboration. Once desc...
Tony Ryan
21 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
What do miniature solar cells, making clothes that dissolve in the rain and new treatments for motor neurone disease all have in common? Chemistry - a...
Chris Stringer
14 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim Al-Khalili meets leading paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer to find who our ancestors were. As a post graduate Chris went on a road trip with a di...
Robin Murray
07 Feb 2012
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to psychiatrist, Robin Murray about his life's work trying to understand why some people have schizophrenia and others don't. As ...
Colin Pillinger
27 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
On this day eight years ago, planetary scientist Colin Pillinger was still hopeful that the Beagle 2 Lander that he had spent years designing, buildin...
Lord Robert Winston
20 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
He's the man on the telly with the big moustache, famous for A Child of Our Time, The Human Body and Making Babies but Robert Winston is also a well r...
Tim Hunt
13 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Tim Hunt is an experimental wizard, a flamboyant thinker and a stickler for scientific procedure. As a young man at Cambridge in the sixties, he heard...
Uta Frith
06 Dec 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Uta Frith came from a grey post war Germany to Britain in the swinging sixties, when research into conditions such as autism and dyslexia wa...
John Sulston
29 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to biologist John Sulston about sequencing the genome first of a worm and then of man. When, as a young man, John Sulston first d...
Nicky Clayton
22 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Nicky Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge University. Her work challenges how we think of intelligence and she says that birds'...
Molly Stevens
15 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Jim al-Khalili talks to a scientist who grows human bones in a test tube, Molly Stevens. Molly Stevens does geeky hard core science but her main aim i...
Colin Blakemore
08 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who nearly became an artist. He specialised in vision and the development of the brain, and pioneered the idea tha...
Sir Michael Marmot
01 Nov 2011
Contributed by Lukas
When Professor Sir Michael Marmot was a junior doctor he decided that medicine was failed prevention. To really understand disease you have to look at...
Steven Pinker
18 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Cognitive psychologist, Steven Pinker, has been dubbed "science's agent provocateur". Pinker studies how the mind works. Presenter Jim al-Khalili want...
Paul Nurse
11 Oct 2011
Contributed by Lukas
Their work is changing the world we live in, but what do we really know about their lives beyond the lab?Each week on The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khal...