Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell

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.

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

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My castaway this week is the scientist, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell. She's probably best known for her work in the field of neuroscience and stroke research. Now President and Vice Chancellor at Manchester University, it is a billion pound business that she's been running for almost five years.

Presenter0:51

She claims her decision to enrol at Queen Elizabeth College in London in the seventies was made not on the basis of their superior teaching on the function of living systems, but rather the institution's proximity to Kensington High Street at any rate she gained a first, and then bagged a PH D in just two years.

Presenter1:10

Could it be that her interest in how we keep the human body alive and functioning began when aged eight she contracted primary tuberculosis and was so ill that she spent eighteen months at home? Well, she says, like most academics, my fate was sealed during my PhD. I fell in love with research and vowed I would do it until retirement.

Presenter1:31

I was also sure that I would do my utmost to avoid any of those nasty administrative jobs. And yet here you are, Professor Rothwell, doing just that, leading one of our great institutions. It's reassuring, I think, to know that even somebody who's risen to your heights has had this sort of career path that seems to have been rather unpredictable, really.

Presenter1:50

Yes, I don't think I was very good at planning, and certainly being a vice-chancellor was never in my plans. I had goals, obviously, and one of them was to make important scientific discoveries, another was to be a professor, and another was to be a fellow of the Royal Society, but other than that, there was no plan at all. And how much overlap, if any, has there been between leading a university and and running a a research lab? Quite a lot, I think, because both are dealing with people, both are involved solving problems, assessing situations and information. It's probably more varied being a vice-chancellor. No two days are ever the same. Not surprisingly, your diary is absolutely jam-packed from what I can make out. I'm wondering if there's ever time for you as President and Vice-Chancellor at Manchester to to just, you know, sneak away for half an hour and wander in and see what the

Presenter2:41

What the bench scientists are up to in any of the labs there? Yes, I do actually, and I'm still involved in research. You don't get your lab coat on, do you? No, I don't get my lab coat on. I haven't done that for a while. They get worried if I do. But I'm certainly closely involved in planning of experiments, discussion of results, writing grants. I still was reading papers on the train on the way down. And I still love doing research. And I suppose it would be nice if I had a little bit more time. But I also love being a vice-chancellor. I was going to ask you what your hobbies, if any, were, and then I read.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell2:48

No, I don't

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell2:51

Yeah.

Presenter3:11

I read yesterday that you said to somebody interviewing you once that reading research is my hobby. That is not. Can I just make that absolutely clear? That's not a hobby. I mean, do you ever switch off? Oh, yes, yeah, yeah. We have a house in Sweden which spends time there and beautiful outdoors. So, yes, yes, I do switch off. Yes, I don't work all the time. Tell me about your eight choices then today. Your first one. Why have you chosen this?

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell3:16

Yeah.

Speaker 43:16

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell3:16

What the f.

Presenter3:33

So this is Side Cafe, my oh my. I felt, first of all, given so much music in Manchester, I had to choose a Manchester band.

Presenter3:43

It's partly because it's Manchester that I love passionately and a great band and a great tune.

Speaker 33:50

For some strange reason I got out of my bed, walked across the room

Presenter3:51

Reason I

Speaker 33:58

Looked in the mirror.

Speaker 34:00

What did I see?

Speaker 34:02

I saw the devil, he was looking at me.

Speaker 34:06

My mouth

Speaker 34:08

Oh, yeah, my wisdom. Yeah, but you tested it.

Speaker 34:14

Don't make it.

Speaker 44:15

Besides, I know you can take it. I always knew that you would

Presenter4:24

My, oh my, sad Cathay. So Professor Nancy Rothwell, physiology, the nature of life, and for you in particular, how we keep the human body alive and functioning is what you spent a lot of your professional life exploring. How close are we, the human race, to actually understanding how we're made and how we work?

Presenter4:43

In some ways very close, some parts of the human body and its functioning is very well known.

Presenter4:49

However, the part that I now work on, the brain, there is a lot that we don't know still. Right. Um it was nineteen ninety eight then when you stepped out, I would say, into the blinding light of publicity and you delivered the prestigious Royal Institution Christmas lecture.

Presenter5:04

How much preparation and dare I say how much angst went into that? Huge amount. Three months of planning and writing because you do five lectures and each one has on average 40 or 50 demonstrations, props, short films. I was absolutely petrified. What was fascinating was you couldn't see everything that went wrong behind the scenes. So the iguana escaped and nearly re-entered right in front of the cameras and was caught by a cameraman and various other things went wrong. But I've always said it's probably the hardest thing I've ever done and the most fun I've had. Not long ago I was sent a beautiful picture that really touched me. It was from a couple and they showed me a picture of me with their daughter at the Royal Institution Christmas lectures when she was quite little and then that summer graduating with a degree in chemical engineering from the University of Manchester. And they said you were her inspiration. So that absolutely made my day.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell5:53

Yeah.

Presenter5:58

You say various other things went wrong. Brian, this beautiful little tiny orphaned monkey that you brought on to illustrate a point, he almost stole the show. Tell us what it is. Well, it was the opening scene of the opening lecture, and Brian was resting on my arm. And he was generally very tame, but the cheering of the children frightened him, so he peed all over me. All over that beautiful silk shirt you were wearing. You took it very well. I couldn't really stop.

Speaker 46:01

Yeah.

Speaker 46:07

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell6:20

You took it very well.

Presenter6:24

You opened your lecture to this young and very enthusiastic looking audience by saying humans are the most remarkable organisms on the planet, possibly the universe.

Presenter6:34

Given the extensive decades of work that you've done, how easy is it really, honestly, to keep hold of that sort of enthusiastic simplicity in your work?

Presenter6:43

I think most scientists find it quite easy because what could be more exciting than trying to understand things around you or your own body? Whether you're a cosmologist or a environmental biologist or a physiologist, it it's understanding things that are here. So I still find it fascinating. Let's hear your second of the morning then. Tell me about this. What have you chosen and why then? So it it's actually English Dances by Malcolm Arnold, but the reason I've chosen it is because it's the theme tune for the Royal Institution Christmas lectures, or it was when I did them. So this piece of music makes me nervous every time I hear it because it was what I heard as I was standing waiting to go on before each lecture and it still has that reaction from me.

Presenter8:22

That was the second movement from Malcolm Arnold's English Dancers Opus twenty seven performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomas. And you said during that, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, that that is never played for pleasure in your house because it only really it brings back those memories of that Royal Institution Christmas lecture that you carried off so well.

Speaker 48:34

Because it only really

Presenter8:41

Your father was a scientist. Tell me about him. You've described him before as gregarious and a little odd. Yes, he was a bit eccentric. He was a biologist, so we had lots of biology things at home. Skeletons and, you know, pickle things and um books about biology. So I suppose they were all around me. But he also was very fond of music, played the piano, and so there was a lot of blues music in our house. And he was a lover of fast cars too, I suppose. Very much so, yes, although they were broken a lot of the time. And my mother always said we couldn't afford them. But yeah, no, I was brought up from as long as I can remember with fast cars and going to race tracks and things, so.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell9:06

Very much.

Presenter9:17

Right. And is that a love that's continued for you? Yes. It has, yes. I do rather like cars, yes.

Speaker 49:19

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell9:19

It has.

Speaker 49:20

Uh

Presenter9:22

You're not going to tell me now, are you? But just before we came in, you said what did you spend last weekend doing? On Sunday, I did track racing in a very fast car, which was fantastic. I was very nervous, but I got up to about 150 miles an hour on the street. Goodness fun. Yeah, it was really good fun. Um, it was a small Lancashire village that you grew up in. For the first six years of your life, I mean, you were.

Speaker 49:23

That's

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell9:34

Goodness fun

Presenter9:42

You were on your own. You were an only child until your brother w was born. How did you fill those days as a little girl before your brother came along?

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell9:43

Um

Presenter9:48

Outside most of the time that I can remember, I spent a lot of time with my cousins. Um they had a a train, a real train. What do you mean they had a real train? Where? Just a mile down the road. It was, you know

Presenter10:02

miniature, but big, you know, you could ride on it with a proper steam engine and everything. So I used to go down there and a lot of countryside my uncles were farmers, so I spent time when I was little on on their farm.

Presenter10:12

And you hated your first primary school, I read. What was it? Yeah, I didn't like it very much. What was the problem? It it was just a very formal, private girls' school. It was quite strict. I seemed to get told off more than I felt I should do. And

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell10:17

What was the problem?

Presenter10:26

It was sort of learning a lot of things rather than doing things. Right. And how were your report cards? Not very good.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell10:31

And it will have

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell10:33

Not very good.

Presenter10:33

Not very good, I'm afraid. Could do better, needs to concentrate more. And what did your parents say about this? They took it quite well, because I I I did okay in exams and tests, so I remember my m mother once saying, Oh, no, not again, you need to concentrate more. But I I don't think they worried about it too much. Uh what mattered to you when you were little then?

Presenter10:55

Very little.

Presenter10:56

Being outside and doing things and riding my bike and the things kids like doing, building tree houses and all those sorts of things. Then a bit later, drawing. I'll ask you more about that in a second. For now, it's time for your third piece. Tell me about this.

Presenter11:11

This is Howling Wolf, Moaning in the Moonlight. It was one of many, many blues records we had at home, so it was played a lot. I I loved it and I still do love it. So it's memories of my childhood, I think.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell11:47

Uh

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell11:49

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell11:50

Good, somebody knocking on my door.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell12:06

Somebody knocking on my door.

Presenter12:21

Howland Wolf and Moonin at Midnight and Memories for You of the tracks that used to be played at home by your father, who loved that type of music, uh Nancy Rothwell. Tell me about uh them being ill. I said in the introduction you round about eight, maybe nine, when you got tuberculosis. What what happened?

Presenter12:37

I felt as though I had flu, but it went on and on. And after about three or four months of really being in bed all the time, I was diagnosed with primary TB and was treated with this horrible pink stuff called an apposade. It was absolutely disgusting. It's much better now. So I didn't get a full tuberculosis, but I was ill for quite a long time. But after about six months, I was well enough to do things, but not to go back to school. So I was taught at home by my aunt, who was a supply teacher, and to some extent by my father.

Presenter13:07

And the type of teaching that you got, given that you tended to be a little bit

Presenter13:11

restless and and annoyed in the primary school you'd been in. Did it suit you better? Yeah, that's the one to one actually. I could I could do things at my own pace. People often say, Well, wasn't it a great disadvantage to have been off school? In fact, until I went into the grammar school. I I don't think it was. I think it was probably an advantage to me. When did you start drawing?

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell13:15

Yeah, that's the one to worry about.

Speaker 413:16

Uh

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell13:16

Yeah.

Presenter13:28

After about six months I started drawing and I and I had a big thing about designing things, clothes and houses and all sorts of things like that. And you seriously considered that that might be something sort of professionally that that you wanted to explore? I did. I mean uh later at the grammar school I I it was not really acceptable to do maths, physics, chemistry and art at A level so I went to art college part-time. And I thought I'd quite like to do something in art or design but fortunately my art teacher was honest with me and said you're probably not good enough to make any money at it so that went by the wayside. Even now we still tend to sort of bracket the arts and sciences separately in education. You know we've got

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell13:40

I do

Presenter14:05

Creative and interesting in one silo and then we have difficult and logical i in the next. It it's terribly unhelpful. It's very unhelpful and I think it's very untrue. I think all good scientists are very creative. I think science is interesting. It has some words and some phrases that if you don't know them you feel outside it. But they're only jargon.

Presenter14:24

You mentioned that you were told by your teacher that you'd never make a living at it. You did manage to sort of fund some of your student days by doing cartoons. You did cartoons, I did, I did. It was while I was doing my PhD, we did some work with a pharmaceutical company, and they saw me drawing cartoons. And so I drew a number of cartoons for them for PR and earned quite a bit of money doing it, actually. It was quite useful.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell14:30

Which shouldn't be

Presenter14:44

Now, here's the thing. You dropped biology when you were fourteen. Yes. First of all, I want to know what your dad said.

Presenter14:50

Fun?

Presenter14:52

I said it's boring, and he said fine.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell14:52

Uh

Speaker 414:52

So it's

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell14:52

Yeah.

Presenter14:54

Really? Yeah, he thought math, physics and chemistry were more important. Did you have an idea? I read somewhere that you said age six you wanted you wrote in an essay somewhere that you wanted to be a famous scientist. I did, but then that sort of left my consciousness a bit. When I was about fourteen or fifteen,

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell15:02

But you want to be a

Presenter15:10

I didn't know what I wanted to do. I hadn't made my mind up then. Tell me about your next choice then. We're on your fourth of the morning. Tell me about this. So this is Mozart's Fawn Concerto. It was played to me when I was at school. I think I was eleven in the first music class. And I just loved it. And I went home and I said I'm going to save up my pocket money to buy it. And it was quite expensive. My parents were quite surprised. But I saved up my pocket money and I bought it. And I still love it.

Speaker 415:44

Yeah.

Speaker 415:54

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Speaker 416:03

Ba ba ba ba.

Presenter16:35

Dennis Brain the soloist there in the third movement from Mozart's Horn Concerto No. Four in E flat major, accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Herbert von Carrigan. So, Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, then, you went to study, as we know, at what was then Queen Elizabeth College in Kensington. It's now part of King's College.

Presenter16:52

I'm imagining your results were probably good enough to get into Oxford or Cambridge, should you have wished. Why didn't you wish?

Presenter16:58

I didn't feel they would suit me really. I thought they would be very traditional, lots of very clever people who would work very, very hard and be very serious. That's probably completely unfair, as I know now from many great people who go to Oxford and Cambridge, but that was my view of it, that there would be people not particularly like me.

Presenter17:18

Do you think I mean, you're a very sort of plain speaking Lancashire lass. Do you think y you've always had a tendency to to play down to yourself your own capabilities? Yes, I think I'm realistic, though. I think I sort of you know, I've I've I've done well.

Presenter17:32

Probably better than I expected. But maybe, yeah. When you were studying, as I understand it, you worked in a bar three or four nights a week. You also had a part-time job at a market gardener's. You were captain of the girls' rugby team and you played darts quite a lot. Yes. You got a first-class degree. How on earth did you manage that as well? So, I mean, it varied quite a bit. So, the first year I worked really hard because I I was f so worried about doing badly. The second year

Speaker 417:50

Did you manage that as well?

Presenter18:01

I did hardly any work at all.

Presenter18:03

But what changed it all was the third year when I started doing a research project, and suddenly I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the rest of my career. And suddenly, it wasn't work anymore, it was pleasure. And given that you had chosen the college partly because of where it was, did you spend a lot of time and what would have been probably B-barned? Yes, I did. I couldn't afford to buy very much, but I used to spend it. It was all so dark as well. It was fantastic. I loved it.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell18:18

Yeah.

Presenter18:25

Your first area then of pioneering work would have been this would have been in the late seventies, I guess. It was something called the brown fat theory.

Presenter18:33

Sum it up for me. What is brown fat theory? So brown fat is a special sort of it's not really a fat as such, it's a special tissue that burns off calories. And we knew that brown fat was activated in babies and little animals to keep them warm in the cold. And we also thought that some people can burn off energy very easily and others tend to lay down fat. And I've always been one of those that burn off energy easily. And so our experiments tried to test the idea, could brown fat be responsible for those people and animals that can burn off extra calories and therefore not put on weight. You are, as you say, you're one of those people who doesn't put on weight, you're very slim and elegant. Were you ever your own guinea pig in these experiments? Oh yes, yes, yes. I did the underfeeding and the overfeeding experiments. So we overate for about three weeks, 3,000 calories a day. It was quite unpleasant actually. And I only put on about a kilo and some of the other poor guinea pigs, one put on 10 kilos and I don't think he ever lost it.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell19:16

Oh yes.

Presenter19:32

So, this research was going on in the late 70s. Obesity, as we know, is a problem that is still on the rise. Did your work advance?

Presenter19:40

Not just the understanding, but the treatment of obesity. Did it get anywhere in fact at the time? At the time, not directly, although there were attempts to develop drugs to activate brown fat. But interestingly, now it's come back. Now we can see brown fat through imaging techniques. It's re-emerged as potential developments to switch on brown fat. We've seen recent calls from people who work in the NHS that the way to tackle this growing problem of obesity is with bariatric surgery on a wide scale, you know, gastric bans, that sort of thing.

Speaker 419:43

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell19:43

Yeah.

Presenter20:09

Do you think it should be made available in the NHS? Do you think that's the way to tackle obesity? I think it has to be, because there isn't another way. It's very sad that it is the only way, because it's quite a severe intervention. And there's a tendency to think, well, you know, couldn't they just lose weight another way? But actually, probably from a purely practical point of view, in the costs of treating the results of obesity, probably bariatric surgery is well justified. Let's have your next disc then, Nancy Rothwell. Tell me about this. This is your fifth of the morning.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell20:12

Yeah.

Presenter20:38

Okay, so this is the Military Wives Choir with the famous song that was number one, Call Wherever You Are. And it is a curious choice for me in a way, but I think people are always in awe of things they can't do. So people say to me, you must be so clever because you're a scientist. Not really, it's just something that I happen to be able to do. And I'm so in awe of people who can sing. And I can't sing. So Garth Malone, if you're out there, there's a challenge to you.

Speaker 421:04

It's my wonder.

Speaker 421:09

Books and trees my heart and yours forever shining

Speaker 421:16

May the stars shine on the ground and may your courage never see

Presenter21:33

The Military Wives and Wherever You Are. And as you said, Dame Nancy Rothwell, the call has gone out to Gareth Malone if he's listening to this. You're always available for lessons. So after years of successfully climbing the ladder then in obesity and metabolism research, you switched.

Speaker 421:39

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell21:40

Available for lessons.

Presenter21:47

It was stroke in neuroscience research. What did that mean for you in practical terms? It meant that I had to go and learn about a new field. I had to start reading even textbooks actually, because I hadn't done much neuroscience since I was at university. But the biggest change was going to conferences. So in the field of obesity, I was the invited speaker with all expenses paid, and suddenly I had to apply to attend a conference and sit in the audience. But when you go into a new field, you have no baggage. You come without any preconceptions, so you can challenge much more easily. And what had precipitated the change? I moved from London to Manchester, and I knew I had to slightly shift career to really, you know, have my own path. And so I decided rather than looking at obesity, I would look at weight loss, cachexia, which is very common in disease. And we knew that one of the most common causes of weight loss and high metabolism, the opposite of gaining weight, is damage to the brain. So we looked at stroke. And we had this idea that a protein that was known that caused fever might also be causing weight loss and high metabolism. It's called IL-1 for short. And so there was a blocker of IL-1, and so we tested it. And sure enough, it did reduce the high metabolism and the weight loss and the fever, but it also reduced the damage caused by a stroke. So within two weeks, I changed fields.

Presenter23:07

So as we're talking to each other today in this little forty-five minute programme, around about twelve people in the UK will suffer a stroke. Over one hundred and fifty thousand people a year. Is that right suffer stroke?

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell23:17

Yeah.

Presenter23:19

And you hope that at some point we will reach the stage where if people are in the ambulance on the way to being treated for their stroke, you will in fact be able to intervene at such an early stage in a way that really matters? We hope so. I mean, you you never know. Vast amounts of work

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell23:27

On the

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell23:29

But

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell23:33

We have

Presenter23:38

Don't come to fruition. So, our specific work on this Isle 1 blocker, there's a trial ongoing now in Manchester. If this trial works, and if we do a bigger trial, then I hope that's the case. But things have moved on a lot anyway in the stroke because it used to be that a third of people had a stroke died, and now it's well under a fifth. And strokes can often go, even these days, unrecognised. People can just, if they have these sort of, can I call them mini strokes? Yeah, mini-strokes, that's what they're called, people can think that they just felt a bit off for a day or so. Yes, mini-strokes are, first of all, a warning bell of possibly a big stroke, so it's really important if people have the symptoms of slight numbness in one side and slurring speech, they go in straight away and get checked. But the other thing is, repetitive mini strokes can lead to dementia because there's gradual just small bits of damage that accumulate. And what about pharmaceutical companies? I mean, given that so many people are suffering, you would think it'd be an area where they were sort of piling in to give their backing. Almost none. And the problem is that so much has failed in stroke.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell23:59

Oh yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell24:02

I mean

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell24:03

Yeah.

Presenter24:36

There were a lot of drug trials fifteen, twenty years ago, and they all failed. I personally think that at the time we looked at stroke as a single disease. It would be a bit like saying cancer's one disease, and now we know every type of cancer is very different. And I think we'll move forward if we can understand better the subtly different types of stroke.

Presenter24:58

What about, I wonder, in your own life? You you've amassed the you know, great bodies of knowledge on different areas of health. Are you somebody who takes very good care of yourself? No, not particularly. You're not active. I'm presuming you don't smoke. No. Right, do you eat healthily?

Presenter25:12

So so? Yes, fairly. Right, do you drink? Some, yes. Right, okay. And

Presenter25:17

Driving that car last weekend at 150 miles an hour, which was a very stressful situation, would would that contribute to whether or not you were more likely to have a cardiac arrest or something? I don't think so. It wasn't so much stressful, it was exciting. Right.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell25:25

Tomatoes

Presenter25:29

I mean, stress can be a good thing if it's the right sort of stress. The sort of stress you can't control is bad. I must say I wasn't quite sure I was in control of the car, but nevertheless, I trusted my co-driver. So if you can cope with stress, it's like excitement, it's a good thing. Let's have some more music, Nancy Rothwell. We're on your sixth. Why have you chosen this and what is it? This is Susan Boyle performing Perfect Day. I didn't see the talent show she was on, but I heard about it and then I went to watch it. And I thought, wow, what an amazing inspiration of talent over expectation. She opened her mouth and she has the most beautiful voice I could imagine.

Speaker 426:04

Oh, it's such a perfect day.

Speaker 426:10

I'm glad I spent it with you

Speaker 426:18

On such a perfect day You just keep me high on

Speaker 426:27

You just keep me hanging on.

Presenter26:36

Susan Boyle, singing perfectly. So, Nancy Rothwell, you became Vice Chancellor and President of Manchester University in twenty ten. Then you were, I think, the only woman to run one of the top universities in England. But

Presenter26:48

It we first say it wasn't the first time you'd penetrated a male-dominated field, because six years earlier you'd been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, which surely must be every scientist's dream come true. Why do you think it is, given that there are a fair amount of women in research science, so very few of them make it to the upper echelons?

Presenter27:10

I think there are a number of reasons. Of course, it's more difficult with childcare commitments. I think there's a lack of role models. I think science is not a very forgiving career in that, you know, you work long hours and you need to travel. But I think there is also something about a confidence and an attitude. I wasn't going to apply to be vice-chancellor. It was never in my plan, and also I didn't think I'd be very good at it. But I read a book, and one of the things it was a female coach said that men do have a tendency to look at a job and think I can do at least half of that, I'll apply. And women have a tendency to think, there's nearly half of that I can't do, I won't apply. And it was a bit of a sort of light bulb moment for me. And a lot of women I tell that story to, they immediately go, oh, yes, yes, yes, that's exactly how I feel. A few years back, you wrote that for women, the most obvious difficulty is to balance a career in research with family commitments. And indeed, many top female scientists do not have children. Well, you're one of them that does not have children.

Speaker 328:06

Does not have children.

Presenter28:08

Knowing what you know now, what would your priorities be as a young woman starting your science career?

Presenter28:13

There was a period in my career where I I wasn't very productive, and that was because I wasn't bold enough to to do something different and new. I I think I'd be bolder. But in terms of changing my lifestyle or my choices, I don't know that I would have done anything different. People have asked me if I've made sacrifices to get where I am in my career, and I I don't think of it that way at all.

Presenter28:34

And typically no, how many hours a week do you want to? Um probably seventy. What does Paul, your partner, think about that? He thinks work too hard.

Presenter28:46

But he's given up, I think.

Presenter28:48

I've always been like that. It was a Nobel Prize winner Dorothy Hodgkin who once said that one of the most important things for a scientist is to find a sympathetic partner. Yes. Is he sympathetic?

Presenter28:58

Yes, but he's also quite hard on me.

Presenter29:00

He says, you know, you need to take a break now, or you need to give yourself a bit of time. And do you ever listen? Yes, a bit.

Presenter29:07

Yes, I do.

Presenter29:09

Let's have your next piece of music then. What are we going to hear? We're on your uh oh yeah, you want us to turn it up for this one. Yes, yes, tell us about this. John Mayo took the car. This dates back to my youth. Uh you asked me what the value was of going to art college, and one of the things I always tell people is, as I told you, drawing cartoons. Another was that I had some credibility with the humanities people in the university when I took on a broader role. And the third was there was a handsome young man with a nice car at art college and whistled together. And this we used to play on the 8-track. And the fourth line is particularly good memory for me.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell29:14

Yeah.

Speaker 429:43

Turn the time drum up to the hills.

Speaker 429:49

So the flashing match has so good.

Speaker 429:54

I left behind society that deals Me and Nancy with them all the time.

Speaker 430:03

Took the cosmons going down Saw the changing colours of the sky

Presenter30:12

John Mayle and Took the Car. So, Nancy Rothwell, the nine thousand pounds that you charge in uh tuition fees at Manchester University, along with lots of the other uh top universities that was introduced, as we know, in twenty twelve by uh the Coalition as the top level rate. How has it affected the people that you see coming through the door?

Presenter30:31

It hasn't affected the number of students who are applying, which surprised me. The type of students? No, actually. I was very worried because the University of Manchester takes great pride in the fact that it has a lot of students who are first in family to go to university and a lot of students from very poor backgrounds, over a quarter of our students. But I'm pleased that the number of students from those poor backgrounds haven't declined in applications. What I'm worried about is we've yet to see students graduating with that debt, and that may well alter their choices of either their career or whether to go on to further study. You're somebody who's also been very passionate throughout the years about communicating science. How keen are you to talk about the more controversial aspects of science? I'm thinking here particularly, you will imagine, of things like animal experimentation. Yeah, I've been very outspoken on animal experimentation and why I think it's necessary. I don't like doing it. I've always done it. But I don't like doing experiments on animals. But they're very, very heavily regulated. And I think it's important that scientists explain what they do, how they do it, why they do it, and how it's regulated. If people still choose that they don't like to support that, then that's fine. It's an informed judgment. We've talked a lot today about the responsibilities, the stress, the hard work, and so on. It's not all number crunching and so on and so on.

Speaker 431:45

And so on and so on.

Presenter31:47

I noticed today as you came in you were wearing shoes that were suitable for each foot. Tell me about the day that you wore two left shoes to rather a fancy event. Yeah, that became a bit of a famous occurrence. Two of our staff, Andrei Geim and Kastya Novoselov, won the Nobel Prize for Physics for graphene. And they invited me to the ceremony in Stockholm that December. And my plane was late, and I got to the hotel and only just had time to change into very formal dress. And I realized that I had two shoes that looked the same at the back, but they had different height heels, but they were both left feet. And I had no choice but to wear them throughout the ceremony and the banquet. Yes, yes, yes. Fortunately, my dress was very long, but I didn't participate in the dancing.

Speaker 431:54

The offense

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell31:54

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell32:22

I didn't

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell32:23

Yeah.

Speaker 432:24

Yeah.

Speaker 432:29

Um

Presenter32:29

Nancy Rothwell, you seem like such a coper and such a practical person. I'm imagining on the island it it won't throw up too many difficulties for you. How will you survive?

Speaker 432:38

You I

Presenter32:40

I won't like not having people. Right. But I I think I'll be quite resourceful. Yes, but it'll be missing having people around. And and the you know, resourceful, like what you could would you have a go at cutting down a tree if you found a suit? Yes. Yes, I'd have a go. I mightn't be very good at it, but I'd have a go.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell32:44

Yeah.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell32:51

Yeah.

Presenter32:54

I was very surprised to read that you're a daydreamer.

Presenter32:59

Yes, a little bit. Yes, I am. I think and plan and imagine. One of the difficulties with that is I think about what I'm going to do.

Presenter33:07

And sometimes then I can't remember if I've actually done it, so I have to check. I even compose emails in my head, for example, and then I think, did I send that email? No, no, I didn't.

Presenter33:15

Let's hear your final disc of the day then. What's this? This is a song called The Shokun Farewell. It was the favourite piece of music of my predecessor as Vice-Chancellor, Alan Gilbert. And it was with great sadness that Alan died a few weeks after I took over. Actually, my mother died the week before, so it wasn't a very good time. And we had a memorial service for him, and his wife said he would want this as the key piece of music played. And so it's got both very sad memories of him not being around because he said I'll always be there to guide you, and also, I guess, happy memories of a new chapter of my life.

Speaker 433:51

Uh

Presenter34:43

The Ashokan Farewell performed by the Nashville Chamber Orchestra conducted by Paul Gamble with Jay Unger on violin and Molly Mason on guitar.

Presenter34:52

Um I'm going to cast you away now. Now, you said during that piece of music that nobody calls you dame and nobody calls you professor. People at the university just call you Nancy. Yes, that's normally the case. Obviously if they write to me formally or if they don't know me, but but I'm just known as Nancy, yes. Well, Nancy, I'm about to cast you away.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell35:02

Oh it

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell35:08

Do wake.

Presenter35:10

You get to take uh the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, as you know, and one other book, what's your book going to be?

Presenter35:16

It's going to be a big book.

Presenter35:18

On teach yourself Swedish, because I feel very embarrassed that I can't speak Swedish. You may have that ben, and a luxury too.

Presenter35:26

Sketchbook and pencils has to be. Ah, right. Okay, they are yours. And finally, if you could have only one of the eight of your discs today, which one would it be? This is what I found the most difficult, but it's going to be Mozart, because it was the first record I ever bought. It's yours. Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell, thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Thank you.

Presenter36:28

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter36:31

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website bbc.co.uk slash Radio4.