The Life Scientific

Imagine if you were listening to an opera or a Taylor Swift concert, and as the lights in the auditorium dimmed, the music was accompanied by a rainbow of colours only you could see. Perhaps while listening to your friends talking, you simultaneously experience a smorgasbord of tastes, with different words evoking different flavours, maybe a delicious ice cream, or something as disgusting as ear wax... This merging of the senses...

Caroline Smith is passionate about space rocks, whether they’re samples collected from the surface of asteroids and the Moon and hopefully Mars one day soon, or meteorites, those alien rock fragments that have survived their fiery descents through our atmosphere to land here on Earth.

She is Head of Collections and Principal Curator of Meteorites at the Natural History Museum, home to one of the finest meteorite collections in the w...

From humble beginnings in his native Sri Lanka, to a more than 40 year academic career at Queen’s University Belfast, Prof. AP (Amilra Prasanna) De Silva’s research into molecular photosensors has led to a pioneering career in that’s evolved from chemistry to medical diagnostics on one hand, to information processing on the other.

Prof. De Silva challenged cultural expectations and overcame the lack of opportunities in chemistry tha...

There are problems and tasks so hard and complicated that it would take today’s most powerful supercomputers millions of years to crack them. But in the next decade, we may well have quantum computers which could solve such problems in seconds.

Professor Sir Peter Knight is a British pioneer in the realms of quantum optics and quantum information science. During his three decades as a researcher at Imperial College London, he ha...

In July 1545, King Henry VIII watched from Southsea Castle on England's south coast as his fleet sailed out to face the French - only to witness his prized warship, the Mary Rose, sink before his eyes.

Raised from the Solent in 1982, the ship is now the centrepiece of the Mary Rose Museum, along with thousands more artefacts that were recovered from the seabed. But keeping the 500-year-old ship and its associated Tudor relics in go...

"My ideas are often labelled as impossible, or useless, or both. Usually when people say that I'm on the right track."

George Church is a geneticist, molecular engineer, and one of the pioneers of modern genomics. He's also someone who makes a habit of finding solutions to the seemingly impossible.

Over the course of his career so far, George developed the first method for direct genomic sequencing, helped initiate the Human Genome P...

Movies might have us believe that bomb disposal comes down to cutting the right wire. In fact, explosive devices are complex and varied - and learning how to dispose of them safely involves intense training, as well as the ability to stay calm under pressure.

This was the world of Dr Gareth Collett, a retired British Army Brigadier General and engineer, specialising in bomb disposal; whose 32-year military career took him around th...

Many people will be familiar with Parkinson’s disease: the progressive brain disorder that causes symptoms including tremors and slower movement, leading on to serious cognitive problems. You might not know that it’s the fastest-growing neurological condition in the world. Today it affects around 11.8 million people and that’s forecast to double by 2030.

Dr Sonia Gandhi is one of the scientists working to change that trend. As Prof...

How do you feel about snakes? What about highly venomous ones?

For Mark O’Shea, close encounters with the world’s most rare and deadly snakes are not only his profession, but his passion. Mark is a Professor of Herpetology - the area of zoology focusing on reptiles and amphibians - at the University of Wolverhampton.

After dropping out of college in his teens, Mark's life could have taken a very different direction; but prompted by ...

There can't be many people in the world who've saved lives in hospital emergency rooms and also helped care for the wellbeing of astronauts in space – but Kevin Fong’s career has followed a singular path: from astrophysics and trauma medicine, to working with NASA, to becoming an Air Ambulance doctor.

Kevin is a consultant anaesthetist and professor of public engagement and innovation at University College London. He’s worked on the...

Chemical reactions are the backbone of modern society: the energy we use, the medicines we take, our housing materials, even the foods we eat, are created by reacting different substances together. If we zoom in, it’s the atoms within these substances that rearrange themselves to give rise to new substances with the properties we need.

However, chemical reactions are far from perfect. They're often inefficient and their waste prod...

Have you ever considered the lighter side of dark matter? Comedy has proved an unexpectedly succesful way to engage people with science - as today's guest knows first-hand.

Astrophysicist Catherine Heymans is a Professor at the University of Edinburgh and the current Astronomer Royal for Scotland. She’s spent her career studying dark matter and dark energy: the mysterious ingredients that make up an estimated 95% of our cosmos, but...

As a young man, traveling in Africa, Tim Coulson - now Professor of Zoology at the University of Oxford - became seriously ill with malaria and was told a second bout would probably kill him. Aged only 20, this brush with his own mortality led him to promise himself he would write a complete guide to science: life, the universe and everything. His aim was to understand the existence of all living things - no mean feat!

Over the cou...

Claudia de Rham has rather an unusual relationship with gravity.

While she has spent her career exploring its fundamental nature, much of her free time has involved trying to defy it - from scuba diving in the Indian Ocean to piloting small aircraft over the Canadian waterfalls. Her ultimate ambition was to escape gravity’s clutches altogether and become an astronaut, a dream that was snatched away by an unlikely twist of fate.

Ho...

When you think of Artificial Intelligence, does it inspire confidence, or concern?

Although it's now generally accepted that this technology will play a major role in our future, a lot of conversations around AI and machine learning come back to the argument over us losing control and robots taking over.

Happily, Neil Lawrence has a more optimistic view of the power of AI, and how we might navigate the potential pitfalls. Neil is th...

A frozen, white world at the far-reaches of the globe, where you're surrounded by snow and silence, might sound rather appealing. Factor in temperatures that drop to -57°C and a few of us might be put off - but for glaciologist Liz Morris, that's very much her happy place.

Liz is an Emeritus Associate at the University of Cambridge’s Scott Polar Research Institute, and was among the first British women scientists to work on the pla...

Welcome to a world where medicine meets politics: a space that brings together scientific research, government wrangling, public push-back and healthcare conspiracies…

Dr Anthony Fauci was the Director of America’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases for nearly four decades, during which time he not only helped study, treat and prevent viruses such as HIV/AIDS and Covid-19; he also advised seven US Presidents, from...

Have you ever pondered the fact that the universe is expanding? And not only that, it's expanding at an increasing speed - meaning everything around us is getting further and further away?

If that isolating thought makes you feel slightly panicked, don't worry: this programme also contains wine!

Brian Schmidt is a Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics at the Australian National University, known for his work on supernovae: massiv...

How much information can you extract from a burnt fragment of human bone?

Quite a lot, it turns out - not only about the individual, but also their broader lives and communities; and these are the stories unearthed by Jacqueline McKinley, a Principal Osteoarchaeologist with Wessex Archaeology.

During her career, Jackie has analysed thousands of ancient burial sites across the British Isles, bringing to life the old traditions around...