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 the height of the anti-GM campaigns of the mid-nineties. If he were a species of plant, Bob May says he would be the "weedy type", moving as he has into new fields of science and proliferating rapidly, rather than a more established, specialised variety. He has applied mathematics first to physics, then ecology and, most recently, to banking. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Wissenschaft & Technik
The Life Scientific Folgen
Professor Jim Al-Khalili talks to leading scientists about their life and work, finding out what inspires and motivates them and asking what their discoveries might do for us in the future
Folgen von The Life Scientific
336 Folgen
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Folge vom 05.06.2012Robert May
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Folge vom 29.05.2012Barbara SahakianJim Al-Khalili meets neuroscientist Barbara Sahakian. Neurotransmitters are chemicals in the brain which effect our memory and understanding, and neuropharmacology is the study of drugs which can be used in conditions like Alzheimer's disease or depression. But can new treatments improve the performance of surgeons or pilots and could they even be used to make us more entrepreneurial?
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Folge vom 22.05.2012Lloyd PeckJim Al-Khalili meets British Antarctic Survey scientist Lloyd Peck and discovers giant sea spiders. They and other small animals grow far bigger than usual in the extreme cold. Diving is an important part of Lloyd's job and we hear what it's like to play football under the ice. Studies suggest that the sea temperature is rising, and Lloyd investigates whether the animals he researches will be able to adapt and survive. Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.
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Folge vom 15.05.2012Frances AshcroftJim 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 between blood sugar and insulin, she talks about the absolute thrill of discovery as well as the long lean years "in a cloud of not knowing". It's very rare indeed for a scientist to see any medical benefit from their research but Frances Ashcroft has been lucky. Her scientific understanding of a key biochemical mechanism in our pancreatic cells has helped transform the lives of hundreds of children who are born with diabetes, enabling them to come off insulin injections and instead take a daily pill. Producer: Anna Buckley And yet, thirty years on, it's still not clear precisely what goes wrong with the mechanism in the much more common Type II diabetes, now affecting hundreds of millions.