Prof David Phillips

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Speaker 40:21

Uh

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the chemist Professor David Phillips, tireless in his efforts to popularise science. He's combined a high-flying academic career with a love of performance and mischief. More than a quarter of a million people all over the world have been enthralled by his chemistry lectures, which are marked more by sudden window-rattling explosions than dry chemical equations. His love of science has taken him on an extraordinary journey. At the height of the Cold War, he swapped a post in America for a place at the Academy of Sciences in Moscow, where he partied with the Bolshoi and was interrogated by the KGB. Science, he says, is about a group of people with different skills who are joined by a common goal. Now that sounds to me, David, like a very idealistic view of science, this group of people, colleagues, all working together. But surely you must have to at some point be in a way competitive, prove to your colleagues that you've got something that they're not yet on to.

Prof David Phillips1:32

That's true. I mean, you you obviously have to have something to bring to the party, and there's no question that science is competitive. And yet it's collaborative at the same time. We we all pool our uh knowledge, if you like, and that is used to go on to the next stage. So one likes to be first to show something is happening and be right, of course, but that then allows a whole host of other things to happen afterwards by other scientists. We make a huge contribution to the world we live in, and we live in a molecular world. Everything around us is is made of molecules, chemicals if you like um.

Prof David Phillips2:09

Put it impolitely, you are just a walking bag of chemicals.

Presenter2:12

You're not the first person to say that.

Prof David Phillips2:13

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips2:15

But they're at the heart of the economy in this country also. One pound in every five of the gross domestic product in the United Kingdom comes from a chemical sciences based industry, and we want people to know that.

Presenter2:29

It is one of the other difficulties you have I mean, I I suppose for a lot of people that's a pretty astonishing figure to hear, but also that a lot of the publicity when it comes to science these days is the sort of Professor Brian Cox out there, you know, looking at the planets. That you know, that is visually very, very sexy and enticing. Does does that get on your nerves?

Prof David Phillips2:47

I well, it doesn't get on my nerves, but I agree.

Presenter2:49

Not even a little bit.

Prof David Phillips2:51

Perhaps a little bit.

Prof David Phillips2:53

The big questions in physics, the planets, the origins of the universe.

Speaker 23:00

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips3:00

are things which seem to grab the attention of the public, even though they don't necessarily understand them. We deal in the micro world, the molecular world, and it doesn't seem to have quite that cachet, but we do everything we can to bring to the attention of people the the the beauty of of molecules and what they do.

Presenter3:20

And you yourself specialize in something that's called photochemistry. You you look at and I hope I'm right here. You look at what happens to atoms and molecules when they absorb light. And I want you to talk in more detail about what that's led to, because it really is very interesting and applicable to things like cancers. But am I right in the way that I describe it?

Prof David Phillips3:38

Yes, exactly that. Molecules effectively have electrons and if you if they absorb light, an electron jumps from one place to another and that leads to different chemistry. Uh and I've been involved for about twenty years with what is called photodynamic therapy, which is where you inject a dye intravenously into the bloodstream.

Presenter3:58

Right.

Prof David Phillips3:58

And these are chosen so that they will locate preferentially in cancer tissue, in tumour tissue.

Presenter4:05

Right.

Prof David Phillips4:06

And so they're quite inert there, they don't do anything until you shine a light on them, usually a laser light. That excites the molecule and that turns on some chemistry which destroys the tumor. And so if you can do that selectively, of course you you have a big win.

Presenter4:22

Fascinating work. As I say, we're going to talk more about that a little later. But for now, we're going to listen to one of your choices, the first choice today. What are we going to hear, David?

Prof David Phillips4:29

This is Schubert's string quintet in C major. I think science at a local level is a collaborative effort. So what you get out of it is more than the sum of the individual parts. And I think chamber music really is a wonderful example of that, and there's none better than this beautiful piece of Schubert.

Speaker 45:10

Uh

Presenter5:44

That was part of the first movement of Schubert's string quintet in C major, performed by Isaac Stern, Cho Yang Lin, Jamie Laredo, Yo-Yo Ma, and Sharon Robinson. So, David Phillips, you've been awarded the Michael Faraday Award for your work in communicating science to the masses. That happened a few years ago. You've lectured, I said in my introduction, to more than a quarter of a million people face to face. This is in lecture theatres all around the world. And what you like to do

Presenter6:08

Is bring a sense of occasion, a sense of theatre. Tell me about the experiments you do.

Prof David Phillips6:13

Well, I like to start off, if possible, with a loud bang, which is unexpected and sometimes this has unforeseen results. I was doing a piece on television in Toronto,

Presenter6:23

Yes.

Prof David Phillips6:24

And the presenter didn't know what was coming. And there was an almighty bang that went off and and this poor man almost had a heart attack, you know, it was so unexpected.

Presenter6:33

So

Presenter6:35

I mean, David, you could have told him beforehand. Did you were you like your fine?

Presenter6:43

Let's pull back a little bit then, David. You were born in the first few months of the Second World War.

Presenter6:49

Of course, a dramatic time. Did did war materially affect your your early years?

Presenter6:53

Uh

Prof David Phillips6:53

Well, I think I wasn't conscious of it because I was a child, but

Presenter6:56

But yeah.

Prof David Phillips6:56

My father

Prof David Phillips6:59

He was actually a pilot on the River Tyne, but in order to to progress up the ladder you had to go to sea and he was at sea doing this when war started and his ship the De Wietettem was sunk it was one of the last ships actually sunk by the German battleship the Scharnhorst and but they they stopped the ship and took the crew off before they sank it so he was a prisoner of war in in Germany for four and a half years essentially.

Speaker 47:05

Right.

Presenter7:25

And so you were living where and with with whom?

Prof David Phillips7:27

Well, we had been evacuated from Tyneside to a farm in rural Durham.

Prof David Phillips7:35

And so my mother and two of my aunts also were evacuated there, and the other aunts used to visit. And so I was cocooned in this kind of uh group of uh doting women, uh which my wife says uh explains a lot about my character, in fact.

Presenter7:53

And what what did your m mother say to you at the time about why your father had gone away? Did she think he was alive?

Prof David Phillips7:58

Uh there was a long period when she didn't know I mean it's some months before she knew that he was a prisoner of war rather than having been lost. It sounds incredible, doesn't it? But the first act of the shipping company when somebody went missing was to stop their pay. So all of the time she didn't know whether he was alive or dead, she had no money. When it was discovered he was a prisoner of war they restarted his part salary.

Presenter8:15

Goodness.

Presenter8:23

I see. And and for you, as you say, I mean just a little boy. For you, really, those early years of war meant being surrounded by love and attention, because there were all these women with the men at war.

Prof David Phillips8:31

Hmm.

Presenter8:32

And there were you. So quite a nice time.

Prof David Phillips8:33

It was a nice time and it never ceased, actually. All of my family have been immensely supportive ever since, and to this day, you know.

Presenter8:40

Let's have some more music then, David. Disc number two, what is it?

Prof David Phillips8:45

Well, this is uh Fantasia on a theme by Thomas Tallis. It's by Vaughan Williams, and it's a beautifully English piece of music. And I I think I came back to Europe from the United States because I felt European and I'm obviously a Brit, but I think deep down I'm actually quite English also.

Presenter10:00

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Talis by Vaughan Williams with the Academy of Saint Martin in the Fields conducted by Neville Mariner.

Presenter10:08

So, David Phillips, you were eight w when your father came back from war?

Prof David Phillips10:12

He came back in nineteen forty five, so I was just coming up to six, I suppose.

Presenter10:16

Oh right, a bit younger than I'm

Prof David Phillips10:17

But he had been an entertainer in the prison camp, so he had uh run a band, he put on a lot of shows, and he wrote all the music for that. He was also a comedian, so he and a singer.

Presenter10:24

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips10:29

And so after the war he'd made a lot of connections in the camp.

Prof David Phillips10:32

There was a show put on in London by Jack Hilton, and he was asked to appear in it, so I think for a couple of years he was trying to make his living in London.

Prof David Phillips10:42

On the stage

Presenter10:43

So you but you had first then been reunited with

Prof David Phillips10:45

We've been reunited.

Presenter10:46

What did that feel like?

Prof David Phillips10:49

To be honest, I think I was resentful because I'd been the centre of attention and then suddenly this man appeared. And and I think for that reason I only became really close to my father quite late in life.

Presenter11:00

So he went down to London. He came back to see the family and then tried to make his way in the entertainment. I mean, he used to come back.

Prof David Phillips11:03

I mean, he used to come back and see us, but he effectively was trying to make his way in London after the war. And how did it go?

Presenter11:05

Who has?

Prof David Phillips11:10

Well, I think it probably went reasonably well, but I think he realized also that, a, it was no way to live, being separated from the family, but, b, probably it was very precarious so in the end he decided in nineteen forty seven he came back to the north east and took up his piloting again.

Presenter11:24

Right. And your family life changed how. I mean, did you change where you live? Had you moved from one place to another? Or were you was your life pretty straightforward?

Prof David Phillips11:29

It was you like

Prof David Phillips11:31

We made the move from Evenwood, where uh we were in in Durham to Tyneside in'forty eight.

Prof David Phillips11:38

We lived in a a a one roomed uh place in in South Shields and then we then we got a council house.

Presenter11:45

And so how is little David coping with all of this? I mean, that's a lot of change for a a a child in quite a concentrated amount of time.

Prof David Phillips11:52

It was a huge shock because I lived on a farm in a rural area, went to a local village school.

Prof David Phillips11:59

The move to Townside was was rather difficult. I was in a big urban area. The school was with classes of upwards of fifty.

Prof David Phillips12:08

And so I I took a little while to adjust, I think.

Presenter12:11

And for you then, science, chemistry, when did that happen?

Prof David Phillips12:15

I moved to a different school, and we had a really inspiring teacher there.

Prof David Phillips12:20

He used to leaven the bread by getting us to do experiments. I about the only person I ever knew who did that. So we would actually do the experiments ourselves as eight-year-old children, and that really switched me on to science. We used to do things like boiling liquids and finding out what temperature they boiled at. We did things like the freezing point of water and and what the effect was of dissolving salt in it. You know, these were quite advanced for for eight-year-olds, I think.

Presenter12:47

And safety goggles, gauntlets, health and safety instructions.

Prof David Phillips12:51

This was the past, you know.

Presenter12:53

Uh

Presenter12:54

Let's have some more music then. Tell me what we're going to hear now.

Prof David Phillips12:58

Well, I mentioned my father's an entertainer.

Prof David Phillips13:01

and he was a very accomplished pianist, and when we had family parties, all of my aunts, many of whom had been widowed in the war, used to come along, and each of them had their own song, and it was a kind of ritual. They all sang their song, with Dad playing the piano.

Prof David Phillips13:19

This was his song, he always used to sing this one which is uh Georgia on My Mind, great Hoagie Carmichael song.

Speaker 413:27

Georgia

Speaker 413:30

Charger.

Speaker 413:32

The home they

Speaker 413:38

Just an old sweet song

Speaker 413:41

Georgia on my mind

Speaker 413:46

Georgia on my mind, Georgia

Speaker 413:51

Georgia A song of

Presenter13:57

That was Red Mackenzie and Georgia on my mind. You looked lost in that piece of music there.

Prof David Phillips14:02

Well, it wasn't my father's voice, but I can actually see him sitting there playing that.

Presenter14:07

Did your mother ever wonder about your dad's decision to to leave you again and go to London to try to pursue his entertainment career?

Prof David Phillips14:14

Well, I'm sure it was very hard for her. I mean, she'd been only been married for just over a year when he was taken prisoner. Uh and so I'm sure the reunion she expected it to be permanent. But she understood that this is something he wanted to do. Uh she's a wonderful woman, my mother. She she's very understanding, incredibly supportive of all of us all of the time.

Presenter14:20

Good.

Speaker 214:21

Uh

Presenter14:36

What about when you started to um explore chemistry and fall in love with science? I mean, it wasn't something that was familiar, I don't think, to your family. There was no history of those sort of studies going on. Did did it seem at least maybe curious to your parents?

Prof David Phillips14:50

I'm not sure, curious. I think they they understood the value of education, so they wanted me to do as well as I could. But at the time, you know, in the mid fifties, science seemed to be the the way forward, the future. It was the it was before Wilson's White Heat of Technological Revolution, but it seemed clear that there would be a good career there. But actually I loved it. I I I liked the science.

Presenter15:08

Indeed.

Presenter15:15

And what did your parents think once you started getting the research posts and you won the professorships? What was their reaction to that?

Prof David Phillips15:22

Oh, immense pride. I mean unfortunately my my father died quite a long time ago now, thirty two years ago. So he never knew that I had been appointed to a chair in the Royal Institution, which would have been a source of great pride to him.

Presenter15:27

Right.

Prof David Phillips15:35

He never ever told me he he was proud of me. He would tell other people, but he would never tell me. I mean that's just the the he wasn't able to communicate uh that way.

Presenter15:44

So you studied first at Birmingham University. After you finished your doctorate you went to America. Can you explain a little bit about the research you were doing in America?

Prof David Phillips15:54

The fellow I went to work for in in uh Texas was W Albert Noyes, Junior. He was the kind of grand old man of photochemistry, so I learned all my photochemistry there.

Presenter16:01

So I look

Presenter16:03

What sort of character was he then?

Prof David Phillips16:05

Ooh, he was a martinette in many ways. He he had been uh an officer in the US Army in the First World War, and he ran a tight ship. Uh we were expected to work six and a half days a week. We used to have our research colloquia on a Sunday morning. And I remember one morning the Sunday morning happened to be Christmas Day, and somebody made a plea to him, and he unbent a little. We actually had it on Boxing Day instead of Christmas Day, but he he believed in application.

Presenter16:35

Now somebody of your eminence, of course, now and again has to tour around the labs just to to show to show people what's going on. Tell me about something I've heard about I don't know if you want to tell us about this the professor button. What's the professor button?

Prof David Phillips16:48

Oh, this was in the Royal Institution. I used to have to show distinguished guests around and I would take them into the laser labs because

Prof David Phillips16:57

Powerful laser twinkling away, bouncing off the dust, is really quite spectacular. And so, in order to try and impress the the visitor that I was still in command, I used to pretend to adjust the laser. And my students were furious about this because often I would detune it instead of and so what they did was rig up a little button which wasn't connected to anything, a little knob, and this I was allowed to twist this knob pretending to do something, and this was called the professor knob.

Speaker 217:16

Instead of

Presenter17:27

Did you manage to to keep a straight face?

Prof David Phillips17:30

I'm a f reasonably good actor, yeah, yes, I could do it.

Presenter17:30

Yeah.

Presenter17:32

Well done. Some more music then, David Phillips. What are we going to hear now?

Prof David Phillips17:37

Well, this is Tom Lehrer's The Elements, and I do this because, of course, I'm a chemist and it's all about the elements, and and also I spent ten very happy years in the Royal Institution, and ten of the chemical elements were actually discovered in that building.

Speaker 217:56

There's antimony, arsenic, aluminum, selenium, and hydrogen and oxygen and nitrogen and rhenium, and nickeli, odimium, neptunium, germanium and iron, amberisium, ruthenium, uranium, europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium, and lanthanum and osmium, anastatine and radium, and gold, protactinium, and indium and gallium.

Speaker 218:11

An iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.

Speaker 218:15

There's yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium, aboron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium, and strontium and silicon and silver and samarium, invisible bromine, lithium, beryllium and barium.

Speaker 218:24

Isn't that interesting?

Presenter18:28

That was, of course, Tom Lair and the Elements. So you went, as we know, Professor David Phillips, to the University of Texas from Britain. That was now it was nineteen sixty four, so that's not long at all after JFK's assassination. What was the atmosphere like as you went to study and work there?

Prof David Phillips18:45

I led a very privileged life because through contacts in other departments I used to meet a lot of visitors.

Prof David Phillips18:52

I met Tom Wolfe, for example, Marshall McLuhan, people of that ilk. So it was a rather heady experience. It was way outside what I should have been experiencing given my level as as a scientist at that time.

Presenter19:04

And why, then, did you decide to go to Moscow?

Prof David Phillips19:08

Well, that's uh it's due to my mentor, uh uh Albert Noyes, actually. He had been the past president of the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. There was an executive committee meeting midway through my period there. Noyes designated each of his team to be the chauffeur to one of these delegates coming in, and I happened to draw by accident the Russian, a man called Nikolai Kondratyev. And so I drove him around for about a week and told him I had decided by then that I was going to come back to Europe, and he just said, Why don't you come to Moscow?

Prof David Phillips19:47

And that seemed like a sufficiently off the wall thing to do that I I did it.

Presenter19:51

Right and

Prof David Phillips19:51

So you went to live

Presenter19:52

But in Moscow Were you a subject of the men?

Prof David Phillips19:55

Oh, absolutely. I was the only Westerner in an institute of two thousand people.

Prof David Phillips20:00

I mean, everybody wanted to talk to me because they weren't allowed to meet Westerners. This was the height of the Cold War. Of course.

Presenter20:05

Yeah, this will

Presenter20:07

And what about the times when you weren't working? I understand that you had a high old time with the Bolshoy Ballet at New Year and whisky at just fifty pence a bottle and all that.

Prof David Phillips20:15

Well, Kondratiev's daughter, w Marina Kondratyev, was one of the prima ballerinas in the Bolshoi. And then through my uh K G B mentor, uh he also was friendly with some of the people in the in the Bolshoi. So

Presenter20:20

Cop

Presenter20:27

Right, can you do can we stop a minute? Your KGB mentor, when did that how was he introduced to you?

Prof David Phillips20:34

You're spied on all the time that you're there, and so I had somebody who was designated to look after me, and it was quite certain he was reporting everything that I did, and I'd been told that before I went. But we were actually quite friendly.

Speaker 220:42

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips20:47

He uh I remember the New Year's Eve that I was there. I went to a party given by two of the stars of the Bolshoi, uh, Katerina Maximova and and uh uh Vassilyev, who was her husband.

Prof David Phillips21:00

Uh and really had a high oil time.

Presenter21:02

Yeah, I mean these were superstars of the

Prof David Phillips21:05

They were really the top of the tree in terms of their artiste of the Soviet Union.

Presenter21:07

Yes.

Prof David Phillips21:12

Yeah.

Presenter21:12

Good party?

Prof David Phillips21:14

Don't really remember. Uh

Presenter21:15

Well, that is a good party then, yeah. Was it in their apartment? Did they have a big part of it?

Prof David Phillips21:16

Well that is a good part again.

Prof David Phillips21:19

It was in their apartment, yes. Right, okay. And so one one thing I did do is learn how to drink vodka over that over that year. But I did some nice science as well.

Presenter21:27

Right. And what about I mean, you say that there was a fairly benign presence, this uh KGB man. Did you were there times when you ever did fall foul of of uh of the KGB and of of the official channels?

Prof David Phillips21:38

Yes, I I I had been planning to go on a walking tour with the people I was working with to the Crimea, and about two days before we were due to go, the Academy of Sciences said you are not allowed to go to the Crimea, it's closed to foreigners and so they cooked up a a trip for me out to the east of Moscow to a place called Vladimir.

Prof David Phillips22:00

And off I went and got off the train, and the train chugged away, and there was nobody there to meet me, although that had been promised. So I made my way to uh uh the the In tourist hotel. They didn't know anything about me, and they found out I was English.

Prof David Phillips22:17

And the next thing I know, the KGB arrived, and I I was interrogated for about five hours. And in the end it they verified everything and then I I was okay.

Presenter22:26

Yes, but for those five hours completely alone in a town where you knew nobody and nobody knew you couldn't.

Prof David Phillips22:29

Time currently.

Prof David Phillips22:31

And I didn't know what I'd done wrong. I mean, that was the problem. And it turns out that a few weeks before, there had been a big writers' trial in Moscow.

Presenter22:33

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips22:41

And they'd all been sent to the gulag. And what I didn't know was that Vladimir was the transit prison.

Prof David Phillips22:47

Before they went out to the the various camps.

Presenter22:49

Right.

Prof David Phillips22:50

And these people were actually in Vladimir at the time, and I think they were terrified. I was a Western journalist trying to make contact with them.

Presenter22:57

I see. How did it seem to you coming back to the West after the war?

Prof David Phillips23:00

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips23:01

Well, I left by ship from Leningrad, uh St. Petersburg now, and the first place we stopped was uh Helsinki.

Presenter23:04

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips23:10

and I had a sudden overwhelming sense that I'd been in prison for a year. Really? Because everything was so bright and colourful and all the the girls were wearing short skirts. This was nineteen sixty seven and there was a kind of release.

Presenter23:21

The channel.

Presenter23:25

Let's have some music then, David. We are on well, appropriately, disc number five.

Prof David Phillips23:30

Well, I had a wonderful time in Moscow. I mean, the the the friendliness of the people is just beyond belief. They have a great self deprecating sense of humour also. And the reason I've chosen this is to remind me of those days in Moscow. So this is the Red Army Chorus and Band and the piece called the Soldiers' Chorus.

Presenter24:17

The Red Army Chorus and Band, and the Soldiers' Chorus. Unlikely as it may seem, David Phillips, it was a game of Skittles that changed the course of your life. Tell me what happened.

Prof David Phillips24:28

Well, I'd I'd had this very heady experience in Moscow. I'm mixing with diplomats and journalists and s senior Soviet artists. And I'd had a similar sort of experience in in in Texas. And then suddenly I was in Southampton as a beginning lecturer and

Presenter24:45

Yeah.

Speaker 424:45

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips24:47

Really had to start from scratch to build up a research group.

Prof David Phillips24:53

And I I find out quite tough. I it was really quite hard when I first started in Southampton. And then one of my research students had organised a beer and Skittles evening and he

Prof David Phillips25:05

Invited me along. It was mainly students who were going. But when I got there, there were some young teachers that he had invited and.

Prof David Phillips25:13

Well, to cut a long story short, one of them was uh Caroline who became my wife and is still my wife.

Presenter25:17

Yes, how long have you been married then?

Prof David Phillips25:19

Forty years just before Christmas, so.

Presenter25:21

It can be a difficult thing for somebody living with married to making a life with people in your position. You know, scientists are n notoriously dedicated to the cause. As you said at one point, you were working these six and a half days a week. Is she somebody who has been willing to keep the rest of the show on the road while you've been doing your work? Or?

Prof David Phillips25:39

She has. We we have only one daughter and Caroline's been working as a teacher in fact uh until uh she retired the same time I took retirement from Imperial College.

Prof David Phillips25:50

We have a lot in common. We enjoy music, we enjoy theatre.

Prof David Phillips25:54

And we enjoy travel. So we've been together. Uh travelling, it hasn't been a complete separation. But when I'm working in London, uh I really am working. And so

Prof David Phillips26:06

We we didn't see a lot of each other and and that, you know, we went through some difficult patches uh because of that.

Presenter26:12

Let's have some more music then, David. What are we going to hear now? We're on disc six.

Prof David Phillips26:16

Well, this is uh part of the love duet from Vienna La Sera from Evening is Coming from Puccini's Madam Butterfly. It's one of the great love duets in in opera, and I I I love opera. But the real reason for choosing it is that I lecture all round the world, as you said, and I was giving some lectures in Charles University in Prague on one occasion a few years ago.

Prof David Phillips26:39

And they managed to get me one ticket for the Prague opera that night, and I was there on my own.

Prof David Phillips26:44

The normal soprano was was a a Czech lady, very sveld lady. Well, for this one night that I was there, they had got a Japanese soprano in as substitute, but who also was very rotund, very heavy. But having not changed the staging at the end of this aria

Prof David Phillips27:06

The tenor tried to pick up this this lady, and you could see the hernia happening in slow motion. He lurched off the stage and his voice rose in octave. And so, sadly, this is almost spoiled for me for ever, because that's all I think about when I hear it now.

Speaker 427:37

No other two

Speaker 427:40

Er fashion warrior

Speaker 428:15

Love and love me there for the men.

Presenter28:22

Luciano Pavrotti and Mirella Freemi singing part of the love duet at the end of the first act of Puccini's Madame Butterfly with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by Herbert von Carrihan. You mentioned that you are David Phillips President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and given, you know, we explored that at the beginning, it is not right now considered to be the sexiest part of science. It is the case that a lot of children studying GCSEs are doing these combined science exams now. Do you?

Presenter28:51

Do you worry that Britain has to a degree given up on its scientific future, that it sees science when it shouldn't as a an ulceran in education?

Prof David Phillips29:00

Well, I think the combined science does not instil a great interest in science. And there's a real attempt now to get them all to do triple science, the individual sciences, which I think is a much better preparation and makes it much more interesting.

Prof David Phillips29:16

Having said that, I think we dipped in terms of the number of students choosing to do chemistry at university, say, ten years ago. That has really turned around. The oh, the number of applications to do chemistry now is is going through the roof.

Speaker 429:25

Has it

Speaker 429:30

Right.

Prof David Phillips29:31

So I think there's been a real turnaround in the last two or three years where students have begun to realize that it's a tough old world out there and they'd better prepare themselves for it and therefore do the hard subjects rather than the easy subjects.

Presenter29:44

Oh, yes. So you you are optimistic. You think, you know, that Britain will be breeding the the Michael Faradays of the future, people who who have a great enthusiasm specifically for chemistry and who see that as, you know, not only an interesting subject, but an applicable subject?

Prof David Phillips29:59

I do quite passionately, but you can't nurture the plant without its its food and water. What we're very worried about is the effect of the fees, which could turn people off doing long courses. And most chemistry courses are four year courses. We just don't know. I mean, we have no idea how it's going to pan out. But I'm

Prof David Phillips30:22

Faintly optimistic that it won't be as catastrophic as some people think.

Presenter30:26

You mentioned you have a a daughter, Sarah. Did you manage to persuade her to go into the sciences?

Prof David Phillips30:28

Did you mind

Prof David Phillips30:30

No, I remember talking to Sarah when she was fifteen and saying, What do you want to do? and she said, Well, I know what I don't want to do, Dad, and that was science. Well, sh what she said was she th the the good reason was she thought her mathematics wasn't strong enough.

Presenter30:38

Why was that a

Presenter30:45

Right.

Prof David Phillips30:45

In fact she was quite good at it.

Prof David Phillips30:47

But the real reason, I think, was she said well, you you seem to work so hard, Dad and I said, Well, yes, I work hard because that's what I want to do. This is my life I'm I'm interested in it.

Prof David Phillips30:57

Interestingly now, she is uh

Prof David Phillips31:00

Climate change policy officer for a for a big charity.

Presenter31:03

Right, so strongly science-related.

Prof David Phillips31:04

So now we can talk science again, or rather she tells me what I should be thinking.

Prof David Phillips31:09

Uh

Presenter31:09

That's daughters for you. Let's have some more music then. What are we going to hear next?

Prof David Phillips31:13

This is John Williams playing Terega's Recuerdas de la Alsampi. Very difficult. Um it's a lovely piece of guitar music, which I like. I was lecturing at a conference in Granada about four years ago, and we took a short holiday afterwards in the Sierra Nevada.

Presenter31:18

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips31:31

And we went for a long walk one day, but at the beginning of the walk we walked down from the village where we were staying down to the village just below.

Prof David Phillips31:39

And it was about ten o'clock on a Sunday morning, and in this square there was a guitarist playing for his own pleasure this particular piece. So I've never forgotten that. Let's hear it.

Speaker 431:47

Ugh.

Speaker 231:47

Uh

Speaker 431:48

Yeah.

Presenter32:52

That was John Williams playing Terega's Recuerdros de la Alhambra. So I'm wondering, David Phillips, I'm about to maroon you on the island. I'm imagining, as you say, you know, been to Japan many times, been to Moscow, Texas, you spent time living there, you're very well travelled. Would it hold any sort of fear for you being on this new island and having to to deal with it?

Prof David Phillips33:14

Well, I'm fairly self sufficient, so for a while I'd be quite happy, but but I really like people, so I I'm going to miss people uh after a while. But no, I I enjoy human contact. I I think I would miss that very much after a while.

Presenter33:26

Right. And what about uh this might be a slightly unfair question, but are there any experiments, given that you'd have all the time in the world, which you currently don't have, and given that you have a particular set of circumstances there on the island, is there anything you could do that would be particularly interesting?

Prof David Phillips33:39

Well, in a backhanded way I'd experiment with photosynthesis, because I'd be trying to grow my own food, presumably. So there's one. But actually, since I've got Tom Lera and the elements there

Presenter33:39

Uh

Presenter33:46

Yeah.

Speaker 233:46

Yeah.

Prof David Phillips33:50

I think what I might do is just exercise my mind by using rocks and stones and shells to to map out the elements and the number of electrons they've got uh just as an amusement.

Presenter34:01

Yes, plenty to do, really. Plenty to do. Um it it's time then to to look at your final piece of music and indeed to hear it too. Tell me what you've chosen and why you've chosen it.

Prof David Phillips34:11

Well, this is the first opera that my wife and I ever saw in Southampton. It was the Glindbourne Touring Opera. We saw on one night this one, The Marriage of Figaro, and the next night we saw the magic flute, and the sets for that opera had been done by David Hockney, and it was absolutely spectacular. And really, that was what switched me on to opera. This is right at the finale. It's where everybody is apologising to each other. The Count is apologising to his wife for having tried to seduce the maid. Figaro's parents are apologising to him for having abandoned him as a child. And it's just a wonderful piece of ensemble singing. But it's very human as well. Mozart really knew what he was doing here. And I'm very conscious of perhaps not having led a blameless life. And so for anybody I've hurt along the way, this is my way of saying my apologies.

Presenter35:57

Ingevar Vixell and Jessie Norman leading the finale of the Marriage of Figaro with the B B C Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir Colin Davis. Sir David, I will give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare. What's your book going to be?

Prof David Phillips36:12

Well, it goes back to my days in Russia. I've I've always enjoyed Russian literature, usually in translation. And so I thought it would be very nice to have War and Peace, Tolstoy's War and Peace. And if I can be indulged, I would like it in

Presenter36:25

Right.

Prof David Phillips36:30

Translation, but also in Russian, so that I can actually bone up on my Russian as well by doing this.

Presenter36:33

Make it actually.

Presenter36:36

There must be such a copy that exists somewhere. We will find it and give it to you, and a luxury.

Prof David Phillips36:40

Well, this is this is really pushing uh pushing my luck, I suppose. Um my father died thirty-one years ago, thirty-two years ago, and uh I he bequeathed me his piano. And all of that time, the last thirty odd years, that piano has been in my house, and about once a year I try and play it, and visitors play it. So if it would be possible, I would like his piano to be there.

Prof David Phillips37:06

with his music, which I still have, so then I could uh learn to play again as I used to play as a teenager, and nobody would have to listen to this terrible noise I'm making except the birds and the and the flowers.

Presenter37:20

I wouldn't deny you that. It's certainly yours to take as your luxury onto the island. And if you had to choose just one of the eight records, which one record would you save?

Prof David Phillips37:28

I would choose the last one, the Mozart. I mean, it has everything. It has the human voice, it has beautiful harmony, it's Mozart's music, and it has r real uh human appeal, I think.

Presenter37:39

It's yours. Professor David Phillips, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island Discs.

Prof David Phillips37:43

Thank you for casting me away.

Presenter38:31

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio Four website bbc.co. uk slash radio four.