Professor Dame Ann Dowling

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.

Presenter0:35

My castaway this week is the engineer, Professor Dame Ann Dowling.

Presenter0:40

The first woman President of the Royal Academy of Engineering, she is a world authority on helping to make our world a little quieter that's to say, the business of combustion and acoustics.

Presenter0:51

One of her concerns is aeroplane noise, but rather than just whinge about it like the rest of us, as befits her status, she's actually done something about it, pioneering a project called the Silent Aircraft Initiative.

Presenter1:03

Figuring out how the world works and how to make it work better has always been her thing.

Presenter1:08

As a child, she took her bike to bits, and her dolls' house interested her far more for its electric lights than for its miniature tea set or patterned curtains. She says, I've always been really interested in how things work. I find real joy in puzzling things out and finding a solution to a problem for the very first time. So welcome. Do you wander about our world constantly looking at it through the prism of understanding it? Is your mind always whizzing with how things work?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling1:38

I'm not sure about always fizzing with how things work, but I have always been intrigued about how certain things work, and I suppose as a youngster there was an enthusiasm to take things apart, to discover what went on inside.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling1:51

It didn't mean my skills were always sufficient to make them work again afterwards, but I learnt by

Presenter1:55

Oh, yes. But I learnt by doing that. Technological advancements in the past let's just take randomly the last half century have been mind boggling in their pace. Do you think it has been a particularly interesting time to be in your world of engineering?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling2:12

It has been a really interesting time to be in engineering, but who's to say what's going to happen in the future? I don't think that rate of change will decrease when one looks at how the miniaturization of electronics or the virtual world

Professor Dame Ann Dowling2:31

the way that we can communicate around the world so quickly, that's just going to mean that that pace of change continues. But I think the next fifty years will be just as good.

Presenter2:43

Tell me about the first piece of music there that we're going to hear this morning. What have you chosen on your list?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling2:47

Good vibrations from the Beach Boys, and there are a couple of reasons for picking this.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling2:53

The first is, I really enjoy the music. I live in the country and I drive into work.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling2:58

in an open top car when the weather permits, the roof is down. And I love to feel the sun and sing along to this piece when I'm in an environment where no one can hear me. So there's just the sheer fun of it.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling3:11

But actually my own research has been very much around good vibrations. What's at the heart of what I do is trying to reduce the noise of the world around us.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling3:21

So always in the back of my mind is that there are some good vibrations and there are some noisy vibrations. Actually, this is probably some good noisy vibrations'cause I like this one at quite a high volume.

Speaker 33:34

I'm picking up her vibrations She's giving me the excitations I'm packing up

Speaker 33:42

Good vibration

Speaker 43:49

Uh

Speaker 33:49

Uh

Speaker 43:49

Good vibration's gone, so anxiety's got my good vibration, so anxiety's my heart, she's somehow close with me.

Presenter4:04

That was The Beach Boys and Good Vibrations and chosen by you and Darwin because you like to speed through the country lanes in your sports car with that up at full pelt. Let's talk a little bit about Britain and engineering and women in engineering. I think it is it's a pretty low figure. I think eight percent of all engineers in Britain are females. Compared with other parts of Europe, France, Sweden, Italy, the figure's around about twenty percent.

Presenter4:29

Why do you think the UK has so few women choosing to make their life in engineering?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling4:36

Yes, you're right. We're quite atypical in the low proportion of women working as professional engineers in this country.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling4:44

I think it goes back actually to our highly selective school education, where from sixteen to eighteen we have youngsters just studying three subjects. Girls do very well at um GCSE science.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:01

But a small number, only twenty per cent, continue physics.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:06

On into the sixth form.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:08

And physics and maths are the sort of standard entry to do uh a degree in engineering.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:14

Some universities are opening other routes in and I think that's important. But I I am concerned that that young people are young women in particular are giving up physics and probably making these decisions when they're fourteen or fifteen about what they're going to study in the sixth realm. And they're doing that before they probably have thought about the breadth of jobs.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:36

That keeping physics going in the sixth form and potentially thinking about engineering.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:41

The huge variety of jobs that that can lead to.

Presenter5:44

So we know we've got a problem. What

Presenter5:47

I mean, I was going to say, what are you doing? I know it's not on your shoulders personally, but you and colleagues, what initiatives are in place to try to tackle what is a stubborn problem?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling5:56

There are a lot of initiatives in place, and it's necessary to start in schools at quite a young age.

Presenter6:03

Dry

Professor Dame Ann Dowling6:03

All the evidence is that actually very young children are really natural engineers. Engineering is all about curiosity about the world around us.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling6:11

wanting to design things, wanting to be creative.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling6:14

And you've only got to see young children at play to know that they're full of that, you know, that the cardboard box becomes a castle.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling6:21

That's a very engineering frame of mind to think about how one can adapt the world around us for the better.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling6:29

So keeping that curiosity and inventiveness that's in youngsters going and encouraging it. So activities in schools that are around being creative, having design and build projects, I think those things are really important. Also giving school kids experience of what engineers do and therefore some experience of what the work of different companies is about is really important. But it's something that I think all engineers and certainly I and my academy are very much working on is making sure each youngster in school gets some experience of what engineering is because it's not a word that's used often in schools.

Presenter7:06

More on that to come. For now tell me about your second piece of music, Anne Darling. What are we going to hear?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling7:10

a recording by the College Choir of of Sydney Sussex College, Cambridge. I went to Sydney as a junior research fellow when I'd finished my PhD at at Cambridge.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling7:23

And basically I've been there ever since, so nearly forty years now.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling7:28

And they specialise in sixteenth century music, and it's quite magical in a winter's evening to go across one of the courts in college, see the lights on in the chapel, and hear the choir rehearsing.

Speaker 47:42

We watch the hear us in us carefully.

Speaker 47:53

And as my woeful plains are slender.

Speaker 48:02

Another star is coming.

Speaker 48:10

For grace we see that all the souls in thee.

Speaker 48:21

Who said was he crazy?

Speaker 48:31

Was he good, was he by see?

Presenter8:43

Give Ear, O Lord, by Thomas Wilkes, performed there by the choir of Sydney, Sussex College, Cambridge, conducted by David Skinner. And that is a college professor, Dame Ann Dowling, that you were saying you've had an association with for some forty years. Nearly forty years, yeah. You were born in the early 1950s. Your dad was in the army. In fact, I think he was an engineer in the army. But you had dotted about a lot when you were a kid.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling8:55

Nearly forty years, yeah.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling9:06

I was born in in Somerset and then when I was six months old went out to Egypt and uh we were there for for two years, but I really don't remember that time. And then back in England, moved around a fair bit. I think I went to something like six different schools before the age of uh eleven.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling9:25

And I spent two years in Singapore between the ages of seven and nine, which I do remember quite well.

Presenter9:31

I love this idea of you being six and seeing the neighbour taking his bike apart and thinking, I'm gonna do that. Did you really do it? You really took it apart?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling9:39

Yes, this was the big boy from next door who was doing some maintenance on his bike, and so I had mine upside down and

Presenter9:41

Okay, so

Professor Dame Ann Dowling9:47

My problem was that um I got all the ball bearings out of the wheel hub and it was just impossible to put

Speaker 49:52

Oh yeah, yeah.

Presenter9:52

It's impossible.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling9:54

As it is. Did it ever go again or did you need to get it? Yeah, no, it did. It got reassembled. I think my dad probably helped put it back together again.

Presenter9:55

Did it ever go?

Presenter9:57

Yeah, no, it's not.

Presenter10:02

And this doll's house that I was just mentioning in the introduction there, it it fascinated you. You liked playing with it, but it fascinated you because of the electrics.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling10:11

Well, I like playing with dolls as well, and I had a huge collection of dolls. But yes, it was a little two up, two down dolls house. But each room had electric lights, which were powered by a battery on the back, and so actually working out how the lights were. It was on a single circuit, so if you removed one bulb, they all went out, just playing around and working out what the electricity, how it was flowing, what it was doing.

Presenter10:12

The micro

Presenter10:17

Yeah.

Presenter10:33

Did your parents encourage you in all of this?'Cause a lot of people, you know, if their kid starts taking apart the bike in the corner of the kitchen or is sort of playing with electricity, they might actually say, Stop that.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling10:42

They certainly didn't say stop it. Uh the bike was done in the garden, so at least there wasn't oil all over the house.

Presenter10:48

Hmm. Am I right in thinking you set the curtains alight?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling10:51

Oh, I was quite a bit older when I did that. Tell me what happened. That was chemistry set.

Presenter10:57

What the Bunsen burner are.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling10:59

Well, actually, we didn't have gas in the house, so actually it were being heated by a little spirit stove. No, but it was a a a big flash and I was doing it in a um

Professor Dame Ann Dowling11:09

In a conservatory, so they weren't smart curtains, they were just very lightweight curtains at the window, and something went with a big flash.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling11:18

Health and safety wasn't the issue in those days that it is now. I was just going to say I wasn't wearing um safety glasses. I think they were non-inflammable, so it wasn't as if there was the you know, danger of the whole place burning down. But yes, the the curtain shrivelled.

Presenter11:19

Sure.

Presenter11:21

I bet you weren't wearing gobbles, weren't you?

Presenter11:34

My point is, they never stopped you, your parents. They just let you get on with it.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling11:37

They were very encouraging.

Presenter11:40

Let's have some more music, Anne, darling. We're on your uh third of the morning. Tell me a little about this.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling11:45

Between the ages of about um eleven and sixteen I learnt the piano.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling11:50

My aim was always to be able to play Debussy. I just love his music. I love the purity of it, the fact that there's no extraneous notes. I'm afraid there were so many other things to do, I never really practised. So I never managed to play the music I would have most loved to play. I haven't actually picked a piano piece here, I've picked one of his orchestral pieces, which is the Prelude de la Prémidie d'En form.

Presenter13:08

That was Debussy's prelude, A la Prémédie d'unefond, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, conducted there by Andre Prefin. Your father left the army, Anne Dowling, when you were about eleven. Wha why did he leave? Just age.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling13:22

Yeah.

Presenter13:22

Right.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling13:22

Sounds bad. He'd finished his term.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling13:25

then became an an engineering surveyor working for Kent County Council. So from the age of eleven onwards I went to a single school, which I think was probably quite important.

Presenter13:36

Given the current lack, you know, we've discussed that the lack of girls taking A-level physics. What sort of science department did you have in school? How were you taught physics?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling13:45

We are going back quite a long time. So I went to a um convent school, and although it was the grammar school for Catholic girls in my area at that time, the emphasis was really much more on

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:00

Almost turning out young ladies rather than educ

Presenter14:02

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:03

Education in science. When it came to A levels, we'd actually lost the physics teacher.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:10

I think there were three of us doing A-level physics in the whole year, and two doing applied maths. And we had uh teachers that came in from the local boys' grammar school.

Presenter14:21

Especially for you.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:22

Yeah.

Presenter14:24

Nice.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:24

It sounds terrible, but it was fantastic. It was mister Hill for applied maths and mister Thomas for um physics. They were great teachers, both of them. We zipped along through the syllabus. Um it was personal tuition. It was just fantastic.

Presenter14:39

And you applied for Cambridge. Was that just a sort of matter of course?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:42

Well, no, my school didn't have a history of having sent anyone, I think, to Cambridge. And my headmistress um suggested that I should apply.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:52

And I wasn't sure that I wanted to. I I was going to study maths.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling14:55

I was afraid that if I just said no to my headmistress she'd think I wasn't very ambitious, and I knew she'd be writing a reference for me.

Presenter15:03

Tell me about your next piece of music, Anne, darling. What are we going to hear?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling15:05

One of my hobbies really is opera. I've decided on um one fine day, and there are two reasons behind this. One is it seems entirely appropriate, because on this desert island I'm going to be scanning the horizon looking for a ship to arrive, so it absolutely fits the scene.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling15:23

because that's exactly what Madame Butterfly is doing as she sings this. But also it will remind me of a particular performance of Madam Butterfly that my husband Tom and I took my mother to.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling15:35

I remember looking at her, and it was in this bit, and she had tears running down her face. We were both in that moment of it, and just squeezed hands, and it would always remind me of mum.

Speaker 416:36

Yeah.

Presenter16:52

One fine day from Puccini's Madam Butterfly, sung by Renato Scotto, with the orchestra of the Rome Opera House, conducted there by Sir John Barbara Rawley. So, Professor Dame Ann Dowling, you arrive at Cambridge from this tiny school. You are studying maths for your first degree. I'm wondering how focused you were as a student, and the reason I ask that is because I noticed during the holidays.

Presenter17:13

You know, lots of uh students, certainly in those days, might have gotten jobs in the local

Presenter17:18

Shop, they might have been washing towels in the hairdressers. You spent your summer jobs at the Central Electricity Research Laboratory in the Royal Aircraft Establishment. Did you know precisely where you were going by that stage?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling17:29

Going.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling17:30

Well, actually, um those are the summer jobs that are on my C V.

Presenter17:34

They are.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling17:34

I also sold ice creams on the beach.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling17:38

And I worked in a school, a boarding school actually, for children with special needs.

Presenter17:43

And what was the proportion within your lectures, within your study groups, within tutorials? The mix of of male and female? What was that?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling17:51

In mathematics at that time was probably about ten to one in the lectures, but of course the college was one hundred percent girls. Yes. So in supervisions it would have only been girls at that time.

Presenter17:58

Yeah.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:02

We were outnumbered by the men, but it never felt an issue. After my first degree in maths I then did a PhD in in engineering where there were even less women. But again, I knew women, it wasn't as if there were none. I actually felt quite comfortable.

Presenter18:17

Do you think sometimes too much of a deal is made of it, that actually, you know, women need to just

Presenter18:24

Focus on what it is they want to do, not be self-conscious about it, roll up their sleeves and get on with it.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:29

I think when I was um a youngster, you know, an undergraduate or postgraduate or early in my career, I just assumed that given time,

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:39

In engineering, we would get to parity.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:42

You know, that's forty years ago.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:44

And yes, the numbers have increased, but they haven't increased by anything but by the amount that I would um have expected.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling18:53

And so I don't think it is just a case of given time it will all come right. And I think there are a number of things that need to happen. One is I don't actually think we do a great job of communicating actually what engineers do.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling19:07

It's like any other job. It involves working with people and having a common ideal of what you're trying to achieve. And in the case of engineering, what you can achieve if you've got the right team with you is just fantastic.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling19:22

I've probably been very lucky in that my career has been in a university.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling19:27

And although I've worked with industry, I've had a great employer who's really wanted to encourage women.

Presenter19:33

Tell me about your next piece of music, Anne darling. We're on your fifth. Why have you chosen this one?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling19:37

When Tom came up, we didn't sort of hit it off immediately, but we did get together in I I suppose our second term and we met again properly on a bed race from Cambridge to London. I was one of those steering the bed and Tom was one of the ones pushing it.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling19:57

And one an early date was we went to hear Verdi's Requiem in King's College Chapel.

Speaker 420:09

God deceive.

Speaker 420:19

Lord makes for me.

Presenter20:59

Part of the Lacrimoso from Verdi's Requiem performed by Joan Sutherland, Marilyn Horne, Luciano Pavarotti, Marti Tolvella, and the Vienna State Opera Chorus with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted there by Sir George Schulte. And you said that that was one of the first dates that you and the man who would become your husband, Tom, went on. He's an engineer also. Have you ever worked together?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling21:19

Yes, so like me, Tom did maths as his first degree and his PhD's in mathematics as well. But after that, uh as many mathematicians do, so he moved across to engineering.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling21:30

We had been married twenty five years before we worked together. Up till then we used to say that we were close enough in field to understand what one another did, but not so close one could argue about it.

Presenter21:42

So when you worked together did you argue about?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling21:46

Uh not really argue, but uh actually I do remember one of the first meetings we as our areas of interest expanded, we had an overlap area and it was around reducing

Professor Dame Ann Dowling21:56

The noise of helicopter blades.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling21:58

And we had recruited a postdoc and a student who were going to work on this. And I remember we sat round the table to have our first discussion with these two young people who joined the project.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling22:09

And we were just batting ideas about how we were going to approach some of the modelling work.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling22:16

And I looked round the the table and then these two youngsters looked really scared, as if they thought Tom and I were about to fall out and their project that they were going to invest three years in was going down the tubes. And it made me realize that a work colleague I speak to very differently from my husband in that, you know, if you think your partner's um wrong, you just say, No, that's not right, it won't work like that. With a colleague I'd be much more inclined to say, Well, that's very interesting, but have you thought about it?

Presenter22:42

Client

Presenter22:47

Can I just ask you briefly, as we were going into that last beautiful piece of music, you rather sort of skirted over we were doing a bed race from Cambridge to London, and I didn't really pick you up on it because you were talking about the music. How long does a bed race between Cambridge and London take?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:00

We left at midnight and it was dawn as we got into London, so I guess it's about six hours.

Presenter23:05

And were you pushing or were you on the bed?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:06

Oh no, I was staring, I was on the bed staring.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:10

And these are

Presenter23:10

These were all fellow engineers, were they?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:12

The bed had been built by the engineers.

Presenter23:14

So was it a beautifully crafted bit of equipment then?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:17

It was um an old bedstead whee with racing wheels put on it. Did it have a brake? There was a a very impressive looking hand brake that we could we could pull out.

Presenter23:25

Damn.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:27

I discovered afterwards that the boys who'd actually made it had not connected that break to anything. It was just to give us a feeling of comfort.

Speaker 423:34

Get off.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:35

Because they did not want the bed to be slowed down.

Presenter23:39

Right, let's go to your next piece of music. We are on your sixth piece.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:42

Both sides now from uh Joni Mitchell.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling23:45

And I think the words are just beautiful, but actually it also reminds me of flying. And not only has some of my research been aimed at at aircraft, flying has been a hobby for much of my life as well.

Speaker 424:00

I've looked at clouds from both sides now, and up and down, and still somehow weird cloud illusions I recall I really don't know cloud

Presenter24:30

That was both Sides Now and Johnny Mitchell. You said going into that, Professor Daman Dowling, that flying has been part of your life. When did you learn to fly? Why did you learn to fly?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling24:41

I learnt to fly in my early thirties. I think I've always been fascinated by flight. Just the thought that these heavier than air machines can take off. I actually understand the maths, but it's still just an amazing thing.

Presenter24:55

I'm glad you feel like that because as a complete ignoramus I always feel like that when I get in an aircraft. So there is a still a sort of magic around it.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling25:01

So I've always felt that there's just a a magic a about flight.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling25:06

I was at a conference.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling25:08

And a group of us went up in a seaplane just to do a little tour round the bay. But I ended up in the co-pilot's seat and the pilot let me take the controls.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling25:19

We flew around and then, as we went back to the lake, he said, Well, do you want to do the landing? And after that, I was just absolutely hooked. and came straight back and said, I'm going to learn. So got my private pilot's license, we bought a share of a very slow and stable aircraft and went everywhere that one could reasonably go from Cambridge in a few hours in that aircraft. And then later on I bought a share of a faster aircraft. Going back to Joni Mitchell, Clouds from Both Sides Now, I got an extra licence that let me fly through cloud. And when you're actually flying the aircraft and it's been grey and dismal on the ground and you go up through the clouds and the clouds break and you're in brilliant sunshine, that song will remind me of that moment.

Presenter26:07

You went through a bit of rough weather in April of this year because you'll know what I'm about to talk about. You're chair of BP's Remuneration Committee and you sanctioned this thirteen point eight million pound pay package for BP's Chief Executive Bob Dudley. And that was an increase of, I think, around about twenty percent. And shareholders, a lot of them, sixty odd percent, I think, were furious. The former business secretary, Vince Cable, said that you should be removed as chair. Can you understand the anger around that? It's a lot of money, isn't it? 13.8 million.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling26:38

Yes, it is a lot of money. In fact, um on the pay it was a reduction from the previous year. It was a a calculation of the pension that led to the increase.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling26:48

I think just to recap, I took over as chair of the Remuneration Committee in May last year.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling26:55

And I was operating the

Professor Dame Ann Dowling26:58

Policy, but also the targets and the metrics laid down by my predecessor.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:03

What I'm doing now is hearing and discussing with our major shareholders.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:09

But also we will be bringing a new policy for shareholders to consider next year.

Presenter27:15

I wonder how personally uncomfortable a place it was for you to be. You are somebody throughout your professional life who has had.

Presenter27:22

Frankly, as far as I can see from everything I read, unending praise heaped upon you for your efforts. You know, you're a member of the Order of Merit. There are only twenty four living recipients of that. You've got more honorary degrees than you could paper a large bedroom with. And to find yourself in a situation

Presenter27:39

Where somebody of the status of Vince Cable is sort of heaping it on your head, it can't have been very comfortable.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:44

It wasn't very comfortable. But what, um

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:48

I took some comfort from actually, was that

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:53

Although the shareholders did not like

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:56

The outcome of the remuneration.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling27:59

They did vote overwhelmingly for my reappointment, and in fact I had a vote of ninety-eight per cent in favour of my reappointment.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling28:08

And um what is clear they didn't like the outcome, but they're expecting me to sort it out, and that's what I'm working very hard on at the moment.

Presenter28:16

Let's have your next piece of music, Anne darling. Tell me about this seventh. Why have you chosen it?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling28:21

My seventh one is Marla's Fourth Symphony, and I just think it's really beautiful piece of music.

Presenter29:27

That was part of the third movement from Mahler's Fourth Symphony, played by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Sir George Schulte. Um, for listeners, and indeed for my sanity, we're not going to get into uh you know the the merits of good lift to drag ratio because goodness knows I'd get confused very, very quickly indeed. But it is worth saying that

Presenter29:45

You're part of the Silent Aircraft Initiative. Well, how appealing that sounds. Can you explain to me in layperson's terms what the nub of it is?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling29:54

The essence is around integrating the engines and the airframe far more than they are at the moment. So for example, putting the engines on top of the airframe and using the aircraft's body to shield the engine noise from listeners on the ground. It meant a different shape of aircraft. Sometimes it's been referred to as something looking a bit like a flying bat. Technically it's known as a blended wing body, where the passengers sit in an oval shaped centre body, which also gives lift. There are complications in manufacturing this shape. It needs to be an all-composite aircraft.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling30:35

but also expensive to manufacture and harder and more expensive to make aircraft of different sizes when each is a a bat-like shape than if you just have, as we do currently, a tube with wings on. But it is being pursued, but it's being pursued particularly by NASA, who have set some very stringent low noise requirements, but the ideas are still being worked on.

Presenter31:03

It'll just be the sound of the waves lapping on the shore, of course, on this island. W will you look forward to doing nothing, putting your feet up, letting your mind wander?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling31:12

I don't think one would do nothing on a desert island.

Presenter31:15

Well you would some people

Professor Dame Ann Dowling31:17

No, but I would imagine quite a lot of hard work is needed simply to survive. And I would certainly want to have a a fire going and lighting and shelter. I wouldn't be looking to put my feet up, but I suspect that your desert island wouldn't allow that anyway.

Presenter31:33

Tell me about your final piece of music, then, Anne darling.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling31:35

I love listening to Billie Holiday. The words of this piece I think are really special, and of course it will remind me of Tom.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling31:42

But also I think the night, the darkness on a desert island could be quite scary. And listening to this, I will feel that sitting there around my fire I'm in a smoky night club.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling31:58

And enclosed rather than all on my own on a desert island.

Speaker 432:19

It's very clear Our love is here to stay.

Speaker 432:27

Let's all year.

Speaker 432:30

But it will end the day

Professor Dame Ann Dowling32:30

It went.

Speaker 432:34

The radio

Speaker 432:37

And the telephone and the movies that we know May just be passing fancies And in time may go

Speaker 432:50

But oh my dear.

Speaker 432:53

Our love is here to stay.

Speaker 432:58

Together we are

Speaker 433:01

Going a long, long way.

Presenter33:05

That was Billie Holiday, and Our Love is Here to Stay, and darling it's time for the books, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and what else will be making it to the island.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:13

I'd like to take the collected papers of Sir James Lighthill.

Presenter33:17

I don't know what that is. You'll have you'll have to enlighten me, I'm afraid.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:20

James Lighthill was the founder of the field of aeroacoustics, which I work in. And these are four volumes, I hope you'll let me get away with that, of his collected papers.

Presenter33:24

Which I work in.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:30

They're from the early days of the field, and he also worked on aerodynamics.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:36

And in those early papers, it's what one can do with mathematics and really a pen and paper.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:44

To work out some of the most fundamental equations that, for example, describe how jets make noise.

Presenter33:50

And when would these have been written?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:52

Probably starting from about 1945 until 1980, that sort of period.

Presenter33:56

Yeah.

Presenter33:58

Okay.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling33:59

These days we rush to do things on a computer, and given time, I think it would be really worthwhile to go back over these early papers and see how some of those concepts can be applied to the problems that we know are there now. But actually, some of his later work was on water waves and on the swimming of fishes, and I would have ample opportunity to study those. And this could well take me into research in a new area.

Presenter34:26

We shall give you that then. And what would your luxury be?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling34:29

Well, it has to go with what I've just described. I need the paper and pencils right.

Presenter34:34

That's right, to do all the other things.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling34:34

But if you'd let me, I I'd like to have a range of papers because I think I won't be able to do maths all the time, I'd soon get bored with that. And so I'd like also to be able to dabble in watercolour. So if I could just expand uh the stretch of papers to include some uh watercolour blocks and have some paint as well as pens, I'd be really pleased.

Presenter34:54

I'm going to give you an artist's studio.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling34:56

Okay.

Presenter34:56

Okay.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling34:58

With

Presenter34:58

Which track would you save?

Professor Dame Ann Dowling35:01

I think probably it'd be Marla's fourth, just because of the music.

Presenter35:05

It's yours, Professor Dame Ann Dowling. Thank you very much for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Professor Dame Ann Dowling35:09

Thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Presenter35:51

You've been listening to a download from the BBC. You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk slash Radio 4.