Professor Carlos Frenk

Speaker 10:00

This is the BBC.

Presenter0:03

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Welcome to Desert Island Discs, where every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, the book and the luxury item that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away on a desert island.

Presenter0:16

For rights' reasons, the music on these podcast versions is shorter than in the original broadcast. You can find over two thousand more editions to listen to and download on the Desert Island Disc's website.

Presenter0:44

My castaway today is the cosmologist Professor Carlos Frank. Whilst most of us are fretting about office politics or how to get the moss out of the lawn, he is kept awake at night brooding on the origin and development of the universe. Widely regarded as one of the most influential scientific minds of his generation, he spends his time grappling with the galaxies and is one of the originators of something called cold dark matter theory. We'll get there. He's predominantly interested in how galaxies form, where the large-scale structure of the universe comes from, and what's its fate. He works mostly building model universes using some of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Born and raised in Mexico, he was beguiled at school by the elegance and beauty of mathematics, going on to study at Cambridge and in California. He has spent the last 30 years of his academic life at the University in Durham, where the smallest room in his house boasts a magnificent view of the cathedral. He says, there is nothing more beautiful than the universe. When you see something extraordinary, you want to share it. And I want to share the magic and beauty of the universe with as many people as I can. So welcome, Professor Frank.

Presenter2:02

I think all of us to a certain degree can appreciate that, these stunning images that we occasionally see beamed back to Earth from distant stars and galaxies. But most of us I speak as one are absolutely not scientists.

Presenter2:16

How would you describe to us the magic of what you see? When we look

Professor Carlos Frenk2:20

Look out at the universe, we see this wondrous architecture that has emerged from what we know was a very simple beginning, the Big Bang, and trying to understand that transition between the early simplicity of our universe and the beautiful complexity of today's universe, which of course has not only galaxies, it has stars, planets and people, is what cosmologists spend their time doing.

Presenter2:45

So you are a a computational cosmologist, and that means that you spend a lot of time with these supercomputers modelling ideas, your ideas and your team's ideas, of how the universe was built. What is involved in that, and how much patience does it take?

Professor Carlos Frenk3:04

Cosmology is a unique science because unlike, say, biology or chemistry or the rest of physics, we cannot do experiments. There's no way we can travel to a star and take its temperature or go to a galaxy and weigh it. So what we do is relatively simple.

Professor Carlos Frenk3:20

We know the laws of physics. So, what we do is we program the computer to solve the equations of physics. Computers are very good at that. And then, the other ingredient that we need is to tell the computer what we call the initial conditions. Once you know the beginning state, then the computer just chucks away solving equations. But, of course, before that, there are often many years of writing the computer codes, of coaxing the computer to debug it. Then, you program it all and you wait several months, perhaps a year, no more than a year, really, because our patience is limited.

Presenter3:54

You have a very optimistic face and a very light spirit. I noticed that as you came into the day. Would you have to have that to do your work?

Professor Carlos Frenk4:02

Well, yes, I think cosmology is not for the depressive. It would be very difficult to be depressed when you witness the wonders of the universe. It's not just what we can see with our eyes, and we begin to understand the just fascinating phenomena that have occurred in the universe. You become an optimist even if you weren't to begin with. But of course, you do need patience and have to be resilient, because most of the time you fail.

Presenter4:24

What about music? Does music play a part in your life? Is it a musician?

Professor Carlos Frenk4:26

Oh, music, I I love music. My early days were just filled with music because half of my family are musicians.

Presenter4:33

Ah, okay. Well, tell me about your first piece of music then. What are we going to hear? Why have you chosen it?

Professor Carlos Frenk4:37

My first piece of music is part of the Magic Flute, which is my favorite opera. And it's an area, the Queen of the Night, where you see the whole power of opera, you see the drama, you see the tension, you see the wonderful melody, and you see the challenge that this particular area poses to the soprano.

Speaker 14:56

Each loose wish, so let's all surrender.

Presenter5:03

Oh goodness.

Speaker 15:04

I don't know if it's a good idea.

Presenter5:06

Uh

Presenter5:07

Yeah.

Speaker 15:09

Yeah.

Speaker 15:18

Bring

Presenter5:21

Uh

Presenter5:38

Uh

Presenter5:59

The Queen of the Night Aria from a Radio Three broadcast of Mozart's Magic Flute performed in April of twenty fifteen. The soloist there was Anna Shyminska with the Royal Opera House Orchestra, and chorus conducted by Cornelius Meister. So, Professor Carlos Frank, it is my understanding here we go, and do correct me if I'm wrong.

Presenter6:18

Five percent of the universe consists of something known as ordinary matter. That's all the things we can actually see.

Presenter6:24

Twenty five per cent consists of dark matter.

Presenter6:28

Seventy per cent is what's been termed dark energy, which is nothing like dark matter. Am I right so far?

Professor Carlos Frenk6:33

Yeah.

Presenter6:34

Uh You're absolutely right.

Professor Carlos Frenk6:35

Right so far, except for one small detail. Five percent is indeed ordinary matter. So it's the matter that we and stars and planets are made of, the elements that we learn about in chemistry in the periodic table. But actually most of the ordinary matter itself is in fact not visible because it's not in the form of stars.

Presenter6:37

Fight pre

Presenter6:52

So dark matter then, which is your preoccupation, it creates clusters, is that right? It it attracts rather than repels?

Professor Carlos Frenk7:00

Exactly. So whereas uh dark energy pushes, dark matter pulls. Dark matter produces gravity. And the reason why dark matter is so crucial is because, as I like to say, we're here thanks to it. Because all the structure in the universe is produced as a result of the gravitational attraction of the dark matter. So without dark matter, galaxies would have never formed.

Presenter7:24

I described it in my introduction rather carefully as your cold dark matter theory. Because this is what you believe to be true. Yes.

Speaker 17:30

Big Yeah.

Professor Carlos Frenk7:31

Yeah.

Professor Carlos Frenk7:35

It has yet to be proven. Well, this is where the concept of evidence becomes so interesting. I'm a practical person, and I think that until an experimental physicist captures one of these cold dark matter particles and brings it to me, I won't be completely convinced that it exists. But the circumstantial evidence is overwhelming. Let me just say one thing. In physics, we are free to put forward ideas, and it doesn't matter if the ideas are crazy. That's fine. You still get paid at the end of the month, so long as your idea is testable empirically. The idea that the dark matter is cold dark matter and that it is the agent that gave rise to structure in the universe is eminently testable.

Professor Carlos Frenk8:18

But to explain this, we need to go back a mere thirteen point seven billion years back in time to the Big Bang. That the Big Bang was full of radiation.

Professor Carlos Frenk8:29

And the early phases of our universe were opaque. However, when the universe was 380,000 years old, which sounds a lot by our standards, but actually this is only the human equivalent of one day, if we scale it to a human lifetime, at that point the universe became transparent. And the particles of light, the radiation of the Big Bang, was free to escape.

Speaker 18:38

Hmm.

Professor Carlos Frenk8:52

That radiation was discovered on Earth in 1967, and this radiation can now be studied in tremendous detail. And imprinted in the properties of this radiation is information about the contents of our universe. That's why we know there's 5% ordinary matter, 25% dark matter, 70% dark energy. It's because of the patterns that are established in this radiation.

Professor Carlos Frenk9:18

Yeah.

Presenter9:18

Whilst we let our listeners allow that to shake down in their head, we're going to listen to your next piece of music. Tell me about your second disc then.

Professor Carlos Frenk9:25

I was born in Mexico, and the quintessential type of Mexican music is called mariachi music, and it captures the essence of the Mexican soul. The song I've chosen is called El son de la Negra, which means the song of the black woman, although black here in this context really means dark-skinned woman. And negra is a term of endearment that Mexicans use often to refer to people they love. And it's about a man who says to a dark-skinned woman, Say yes to everyone, just don't tell them when.

Professor Carlos Frenk9:58

That's what she said to me and that's why I live in Torbit. Well it's joyous music but it just happens that my dad who is a German émigré wants this piece of music played in his funeral.

Speaker 110:28

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Presenter10:41

El Son dolla Negra, performed there by Mariace El Socalo. Professor Carlos Frank, you have to share with the listeners what you just shared with me. Can you just repeat to listeners what you said to me?

Professor Carlos Frenk10:50

Yes, so the particles of light from the Big Bang have been traveling unimpeded for 13.4 billion years. If you stand outside and stick your hand out, it doesn't matter if it's night or day, there will be for every square centimeter of your hand a hundred particles of light that we call photons hitting your hand. And these are particles that have been traveling since the Big Bang. They have not hit anything. They have interacted with nothing until they hit your hand.

Presenter11:18

So you can have your own unique interaction with the cosmos in that way.

Professor Carlos Frenk11:22

Yes, you don't feel anything, but you have to recognize that you're being bathed in the light of the Big Bang.

Presenter11:30

What an incredible thought. We're focusing today, and your focus is asking you know well, I'm not asking very difficult questions, but you spend your life asking difficult questions about the universe. When did that begin? Were you one of those little guys who was sort of always asking questions? Well, unfortunately, apparently I was a

Professor Carlos Frenk11:46

Somewhat uh obnoxious little kid.

Professor Carlos Frenk11:49

Well, because I was curious. I I mean, I think all children are curious. I was just a little bit more outspoken than many. But my first memories are actually of standing in the garden, just marveling at worms and other insects. But in due course, I enrolled in the School of Engineering, actually. You mentioned that.

Speaker 111:51

Okay.

Presenter12:04

But uh Your father was German. He had fled persecution in Germany in the very early thirties. How did he end up in Mexico?

Professor Carlos Frenk12:12

Well, my father, he's 94 years old and he's retired actually after 70 years working as a doctor. He emigrated age seven with his mother, father, and sister. They were originally going to Canada. But the story that my grandmother tells is that she went to a bookshop to buy a guide to Canada. She had already their boat tickets for Canada and had a collision with a very charming lady who turned out to be Mexican and convinced her and then took her to the embassy where she worked that Mexico was a much warmer and hospitable place than Canada. And just in the last minute, they changed their mind and ended up in Mexico. And I was born as a Mexican.

Presenter12:51

And so you're the the eldest son of six siblings, not the eldest child, though. What do you recall of that very early family life then in Mexico?

Professor Carlos Frenk12:59

Well, my family life was fascinating because there was this very some way incongruous combination of the German Jewish side of my father with the Mexican Spanish Catholic side of my mother. But the family was also split in that half of my family are doctors. My grandfather was a doctor. My father, my sister is a doctor. My brother, another of my sisters, is a molecular biologist. The other side were the musicians. My mom was a pianist. Two of my sisters are professional musicians. And my other sister is not a professional musician, but she sings wonderfully. I did not inherit the musical talent of the family. The sight of blood made me faint. So I was a misfit. And just like my ancestors, there was only one way for me, which was to emigrate. And that's how I ended up in this country.

Presenter13:49

More to come. Professor Carlos Frank, tell me about your third. We're going to hear Disc 3 now. Yeah. We'll add

Professor Carlos Frenk13:55

This three is piano concerto number 20 by Mozart, and that is a piece of music that is possibly the one closest to my heart because that's the concerto that my mother played with an orchestra in Mexico when she was 17. And that same piano concerto was played 50 years later by my sister Tere, who's a concert pianist, with a Mexican orchestra as well. When did you last hear your mother play it? Well, something remarkable happened last year when my wife Susan and I went to visit my parents. My father opened the door and we came in, and there was my mom, who's old now, 88 years old, sat at this grand piano playing Mozart concertos number 20 from memory. The skill was still there, and above all, the emotion was still there. We listened until it finished, and my dad said she hasn't played this for 40 years.

Presenter15:52

That was Mozart's Piano Concerto No. twenty, the second movement, played there by your sister, Terry Franck, with the National Autonomous University of Mexico's Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Enrique Barrios. You you were just saying there, Carlos Frank, you could listen to that all day. Principally, I imagine, because it's your sister. It strikes me as you describe

Presenter16:09

Your family. This was a family that you were born into of terrifically high achievers. W were you expected to do well in school?

Professor Carlos Frenk16:18

Oh, yes, we were definitely expected to do well. We were never told of my dad wouldn't even look at our report cards, but somehow it was expected by the teachers, it was expected by everybody that if you came from this family you had well, we had to play the game and study hard and try to keep up with expectations.

Presenter16:36

And so you mentioned studying engineering. You started off at the University of Mexico and that didn't really work out. So, what did you end up studying? Well, I went to physics.

Professor Carlos Frenk16:44

Physics. The engineering professors told me, You're a misfit here. Go and study physics. You ask the wrong questions. You want to know why? We can only tell you how. And it was like a rebirth for me because that was where I belonged. That's the air I wanted to breathe. To me, it was just a revelation because of the intrinsic beauty of the laws of nature and the logic of it all and the power of science. The fact that we can use physics to understand how nature works.

Presenter17:10

And so after graduation you secured a British Council Fellowship. You went to Cambridge to do your PH D. That was around about nineteen seventy six. In terms of not science but culture, you know, things were kicking off, punk was exploding. How did you find out arriving in Britain?

Professor Carlos Frenk17:23

Well, coming from one of the most modern cities in the world, suddenly being immersed in almost medieval times was quite a shock, but one that I took to very well. I was fascinated by the tradition, by the beauty of the old buildings. A few things grated with me, like the fact that in the hall of King's College, where I was a student, there were only about two or three showers, and that was about it. And I remember the tourist guy saying to me, Well, why do you need more? Students are only here for eight weeks at a time. So those kind of things I thought were a bit odd.

Professor Carlos Frenk17:54

Tell me about your next piece of music, Carlos Frank. The Beatles, Eleanor Rigby. The Beatles were a crucial musical influence during my teenage years. And every Friday afternoon, we would get together to listen to Beatles music. And we even formed the band. I have no musical talent. I played the guitar, right? I should say I scratched the guitar. Not that we would have been able to play Eleanor Rigby because there's no guitar in Eleanor Rigby. And that's one of the reasons it was such a revolutionary piece of music because there's no pop backup. There is just orchestral music that's played by a string octet. And unlike most rock music, which used to be about love and passion and things like that, Eleanor Rigby is about loneliness and death. It was a true turning point in the development of music.

Speaker 318:42

Eleanor Rigby picks up her ice in the church where her wedding has been.

Presenter18:48

Uh

Presenter18:49

Lives in a dream, waits at the window Wearing the face that she keeps in her jar by the door

Presenter18:58

Uh

Speaker 318:58

Who is it for all the lovely people?

Speaker 119:02

Uh

Speaker 119:03

Do they all come from?

Speaker 119:06

All the lonely people, Where do they all belong?

Presenter19:14

The Beatles and Eleanor Rigby were just mentioning to me during that, Professor Carlos Franke, about the sort of the cultural step change that the Beatles and their music marked. Were you somebody who was a re

Professor Carlos Frenk19:25

Pepple Absolutely. So scientists are skeptics. But the main thing is you have to be a rebel because otherwise you don't contribute to new ideas. And I was very lucky because when I started working in cosmology, the subject of cosmology didn't even exist. At least it wasn't a discipline, at least not a reputable one. And that was terrific. There were no authorities, there were no eminent scientists that we had to look up to. We could invent and we could create new ideas and new techniques and new methods.

Presenter19:56

You did do something rather conventional, though, in the late seventies, because you're you're now celebrating forty years of marriage. You got married to Susan, you met at Cambridge, and you got married quite quickly.

Professor Carlos Frenk20:06

Yes, yes. To everybody's scepticism, I think our friends were making bets as to how long this marriage would last. And I believe the longest one was nine months. We met in Cambridge. He was an undergraduate. I was a postgraduate student. And there was some chemistry there that still very much with us today.

Presenter20:12

A really

Presenter20:24

You travelled together in the early years of your marriage to Berkeley in California at the beginning of the eighties. And at the time this first attempt to map the galaxies of the universe was going on. And am I right in thinking that the research around that time also revealed that galaxies kind of congregate they look like sort of webs? Why is that interesting and important?

Professor Carlos Frenk20:43

Well, interestingly, when I arrived in Berkeley, Mark Davies, who'd completed the biggest survey of the time, had realized that galaxies are not distributed at random. They make up what we today call the cosmic web. And he said to me, We've hired you to figure out how these came to be. Well, it was a small

Presenter21:02

Just

Professor Carlos Frenk21:03

But I was very lucky. I was surrounded by a group of really talented colleagues, and the only way we realized we could answer Mark Davies' question was by developing this technique that is now in widespread use of computer simulations. And what this pattern, the Cosmic Web, tells us is something very intimate about the universe. It tells us about phenomena that happen a tiny fraction of a second after our universe came into existence. Does that have an emotional impact?

Presenter21:33

Uh

Professor Carlos Frenk21:33

Ctonie.

Professor Carlos Frenk21:34

Well, I still remember when you spend months, years writing a computer program to simulate the universe. When you get an image that comes out of the computer with the first realistic universe, this is why you do science. It doesn't happen often. I'm very lucky. Einstein put it very well that science is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. You have these moments of elation. You suddenly realize, yes, that's it. I've had a few of those in my life. That was one. That's cool. The Music Professor. Uh

Presenter22:09

Carlos Frank

Professor Carlos Frenk22:09

We We are on Earth.

Presenter22:10

Uh

Professor Carlos Frenk22:11

Myth of the day But this is Gracias a la Vida, which means Thanks to Life, written by a Chilean composer called Violeta Parra. She wrote this in the 1970s at a time of effervescence in Latin America. And Violeta Parra thanks life for all the gifts life has given her. And the first gift she thanks life for is her eyes, with which she can see the stars in the sky and the man she loves. There is a tragic side to this song because Violeta Parra, a few months after writing this ode to life, she, aged 49, took her own life. Why, nobody knows, but this was her farewell.

Speaker 322:55

Grossio Sala B.

Speaker 323:00

The bottle thumbs up.

Speaker 323:03

Mediodos Lucy

Speaker 323:07

E cuando los sabro.

Speaker 323:11

Perfect to distinguish.

Speaker 323:15

Lunegro del Blanco.

Speaker 323:19

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 323:22

So fondo estregier bon.

Speaker 323:26

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 323:29

Hello?

Presenter23:33

Gracias Lavida, written by Violetta Para and sung there by Mercedes Sosa. Professor Carlos Frank, this is a cheeky question. What's the biggest thing so far that you've got wrong?

Presenter23:43

The universe

Presenter23:44

What, the whole thing? Tell me, in your work, what's the thing where you saw, I thought that? Oops, that's not true.

Professor Carlos Frenk23:50

Well, when we started, my colleagues and I trying to replicate humbly the creation of the universe, we thought that the first thing to try would be to assume that the dark matter was made of elementary particles, but particles that at least we knew existed, these elusive particles called neutrinos, also known as hot dark matter. And we then programmed our computer to tell us what the universe would look like. And out came a failed universe. Now, me being an optimist, I was trying to see the good angle and look, it's not so bad. And my colleagues just said to me, forget it. This is wrong. But that's the way science advances. How many years ago was that? That was in 1983. But perhaps the biggest failure was I clung to the idea that there was no such thing as dark energy. And unfortunately, astronomers went and found this dark energy that spoils the party. And I was forced to recant publicly at the end of a conference, stand up, and acknowledge that in technical terms the universe did not have a critical density, as we called it then. So that to me was the biggest shock of my life. It's the only time in my life where I've actually been kept awake at night thinking, how did the universe do this to me? What have we done? In that failure then.

Presenter25:05

And

Professor Carlos Frenk25:06

Yeah.

Presenter25:06

What did it lead to your question?

Professor Carlos Frenk25:07

Uh

Presenter25:07

Questioning

Professor Carlos Frenk25:07

Well, I question my bad luck in to live in a universe that

Professor Carlos Frenk25:12

That's all it was.

Presenter25:12

That's all it was. And the

Professor Carlos Frenk25:14

Or if you were up to the job?

Professor Carlos Frenk25:16

Oh, well, I you I do that almost every day. Okay. Insecurity and lack of confidence is something that I think even the greatest scientists, which I'm not one of them, but experience at some point in their life because science is hard and science is challenging and science is full of failure. Tell me about your sixth piece of music. What are we going to hear now? My sixth piece of music is one that really dominated my late teens and early 20s. It's Beethoven's triple concerto. And the reason it was so important to me is not only because this is beautiful music, but I like the whole structure of this concerto where there are three instruments that are competing with one another. It's almost like fencing with one another. They build up this tension. The orchestra then joins in and says, wait a minute, I'm part of these two. But in the end, everything is resolved. And that, I think, reflected my feelings as a teenager of insecurity, of inner conflict. I'm sure I'm not the only one. And what I like is the optimism of this piece, the fact that these conflicts are eventually resolved in a peaceful and happy way.

Presenter27:28

Part of Beethoven's Triple Concerto, the third movement, performed by Yo-Yo Ma, Daniel Barenboim and Itzak Perlmann with the Berlin Philharmonic. Professor Frank, you you said once that you do believe in God, but not while I'm working. Tell me more about that.

Professor Carlos Frenk27:44

Mm-hmm.

Professor Carlos Frenk27:45

Well Yeah.

Presenter27:46

Yeah.

Professor Carlos Frenk27:46

I think uh one of the most uh

Professor Carlos Frenk27:50

amazing things I've discovered as a cosmologist.

Professor Carlos Frenk27:54

Is that um

Professor Carlos Frenk27:55

The very same laws of physics that govern phenomena here on earth

Professor Carlos Frenk28:00

For some reason these laws

Professor Carlos Frenk28:03

Apply not just in our laboratories here on Earth, but everywhere, at all times and at all places.

Professor Carlos Frenk28:10

And here is where God is to be found, in the universality, in the regularity of a universe.

Presenter28:16

I mean, are you a religious person? Do you think there is something greater?

Professor Carlos Frenk28:21

Yes, I think that um

Professor Carlos Frenk28:23

God was a physicist.

Professor Carlos Frenk28:25

I don't see how the order of the universe can be explained intrinsically within the universe itself. Now, I should hasten to add that in physics we don't provide you with any evidence in favor or against God. So, physics is limited in its reach. It has some very well-defined questions, and God is not part of those. So, that's why I only talk about God out of hours. I understand. But to me, if you're a cosmologist, if you look at the universe, well, to me, there's only just one conclusion.

Presenter28:52

I understand.

Presenter28:58

I see. For us mere mortals, the people who are not cosmologists.

Presenter29:03

I get the sense that there can be, certainly for me and other people I've chatted to, a considerable.

Presenter29:09

existential overwhelm when we look at what you do. And it can feel that life here on earth might be without much point. You know, if we are the tiniest of contributors to the greater scientific picture. Do you understand? I understand exactly.

Professor Carlos Frenk29:25

I understand exactly, but let me tell you my take on this. Now we live in a galaxy, the Milky Way, which has tens of billions of stars.

Professor Carlos Frenk29:35

There are hundreds of billions of galaxies like the Milky Way within our visible universe, so you're right, what an insignificant part of the universe.

Professor Carlos Frenk29:45

Yet, this insignificant component of the universe, for reasons that I don't fully understand, has developed the ability.

Professor Carlos Frenk29:54

To study the universe and the ability to understand it. To me, this is the greatest gift we have as humans.

Presenter30:01

Tell me about your seventh piece of music.

Professor Carlos Frenk30:03

My seventh piece of music is a symphony by Mendelssohn. Mendelssohn is somebody I identify very much with. Like my father, he was born in Hamburg. Like my family, he experienced anti-Semitism.

Presenter30:03

Yeah.

Professor Carlos Frenk30:18

Like my grandfather, he was baptized, even though he was Jewish, and like me, he was an Anglophile. And that's why I've chosen the Scottish Symphony. Scotland is a country very close to my heart, because Scotland's given me the greatest gift I've ever had, my wife Susan.

Presenter31:37

That was part of the second movement of Mendelssohn's Scottish Symphony performed by the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Joseph Swenson.

Presenter31:45

You said a moment ago you were saying if you happen to be one of the world's greatest scientists. I'm not one of the world's greatest scientists. I think a lot of people would argue with you about that. And I'm very interested that one of the world's greatest scientists has chosen for the last sort of few decades, since 1985, to make their home at Durham University. What was it about Durham University? What is it about Durham that means that you want to continue your work there? Because you have made it a centre of absolute world excellence for cosmology. Well, thank you.

Professor Carlos Frenk32:12

Durham is just a wonderful place. The university is much smaller than Cambridge or Oxford, so there's much more opportunity for things to be done. I was very lucky to attract many very talented people. The city is beautiful, and the people are so great, friendly, hospitable, open. I just had nothing bad to say about Durham apart from the weather.

Presenter32:34

Yeah, and even you can't fix that. And I don't know day to day how much contact you have with students. But what important message do you impart about how they should conduct themselves and their science?

Professor Carlos Frenk32:46

I tell them that they should not listen to what I say, that they should not do what I tell them, that they should rebel, because I am now a member of the establishment and progress will come by killing off the establishment. That's how science progresses. I encourage them to be rebels. I encourage them to do their own thing.

Presenter33:06

You have worked very collaboratively over the decades. When I cast you away, you're going to be all alone on this island. How will you be with your own company?

Professor Carlos Frenk33:15

Well, I will um

Professor Carlos Frenk33:17

have to learn a new way of living because I'm by nature a gregarious person. I like to talk a lot, as you have probably appreciated, so it will be hard. But there are other parts of oneself that one discovers when one is put in a situation like that of a castaway.

Presenter33:37

L let's go to the comfort of the music and hear your eighth. What's it going to be, Carlos Frank?

Professor Carlos Frenk33:41

Well, my eighth choice is a very simple piece that Robert Schumann wrote for his three daughters. And it's very close to my heart because I had two sons, both of whom are very gifted musicians. David will play any instrument you put in front of him. Stephen is a really brilliant drummer. But David played this piece for the BBC program 20 years ago called the Stephen Hawking Universe. I remember talking to the producer, I said the universe may be very big, but it's essentially simple. Unlike my son, who was 12 at the time, and he was very complex, impossible for me to understand, she liked that, and she got him to play Schumann's melody for the Stephen Hawking program.

Presenter35:13

Robert Schumann's Melody performed there by Rico Goulda. It's time for me to cast you away, Carlos. You will not go empty handed. I'm going to give you some books. You get the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, and you get to take a book of your own along with those two. What are you going to take?

Professor Carlos Frenk35:28

Well, I'm going to take the complete works, complete, including poetry by an Argentinian writer, Jorge Luis Borges. It's so complex. It has layer upon layer upon layer of meaning. So you can read it time and time again, and every time it would be like reading it again. That's yours then. You're allowed a luxury. Well, my luxury at first sight will not be that original. I'm sure other people have wanted to bring a telescope. But my telescope is a real luxury because it's not just a telescope. It has a dome. I imagine this island will be very hot during the day. I will then go in the dome and have some shade there. I will have a very comfortable chair, a picture of Susan during the day. I will be able to get a little bit of a drink.

Presenter36:06

You are really stretching it now.

Professor Carlos Frenk36:10

And at night, I will look at the stars and try to wonder how the universe came to be.

Presenter36:15

So, can we call that a planetarium? Would that be fair? Yes.

Professor Carlos Frenk36:17

Yes, a planetarium is a more fit description for what I want as my luxury.

Presenter36:21

Well, we've given the British Library before now, and that was a mistake, so I'll give you a planetarium. Finally, which of these eight tracks would you like to save?

Professor Carlos Frenk36:28

I think I'm going to take the magic flute.

Presenter36:31

The Queen of the Night is yours then, Carlos Frank, Professor Carlos Frank, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Professor Carlos Frenk36:37

Pleasure.

Presenter36:37

Uh

Presenter36:47

Hi, I hope you enjoyed that foray into the stars with Carlos. If you'd like to hear more from people who study the cosmos in the Treasure Trove that is the Desert Island Disc's back catalogue, you'll find editions with Professor Stephen Hawking, Professor Colin Pillinger and Carlo Rovelli.

Presenter37:05

In twenty ten, I spoke to space scientist Maggie Aderin Pocock.

Presenter37:09

You've said, Maggie Darren Pocock, that you consider yourself to have a very special relationship with the moon.

Presenter37:15

Tell me about that.

Presenter37:19

Literally. Literally, yes. I find it mesmerizing. It would be a nasty place to live. There's no atmosphere and you'd have to walk around in space suits all the time. But at the same time, it's so beautiful. You started this this wonderment and this fascination with space uh pretty early.

Speaker 137:19

Yeah, so

Presenter37:34

Were you a teenager when you wanted your own telescope? How old were you? I was about fifteen when I made my own telescope. I wanted one from longer than that, and I actually bought one, but it wasn't very good. What was wrong with it? It suffered from something called chromatic aberration. So if you're looking at the moon, you have multiple images of the moon all smeared out in different colours. And so then, I mean, most people just put it in the corner of the room and decided to save up for something else. You didn't. You decided to make your own telescope. Yeah, it was quite fortuitous because I was living in Camden in London and I saw telescope making classes in an adult education centre. Telescope making classes? Yes, that's what I'm thinking.

Speaker 137:42

What was wrong with it?

Presenter38:07

It's it's not very hard at all.

Presenter38:09

It takes a while, but you can make your own telescope. How long does it take to make your own telescope? Mine took probably of the order of six months because what you do is you actually grind your own mirror. And that was what made it so wonderful. This is something I'd made myself. Did it work? It did, yes. And to create it myself and then to look at the moon and see the craters jump out.

Speaker 138:13

Finally

Presenter38:28

It was just magical. A few years ago you led a team working on something called the Gemini Observatory in Chile. That was an interesting and quite solitary time for you. Can you explain a little of that? The Gemini Observatory is a beautiful eight-metre telescope in Chile. Eight metres for a telescope, that's some of the largest telescopes we have on Earth. When you say eight metres, is that the diameter of the lens? The diameter of the mirror. Lenses, because the light passes through them, you can get sort of corruption of the light passing through. If you use a reflective surface, because the light bounces off, you can get much better image. So most of the big telescopes we talk about these days are mirrors. I call telescopes that are light-gathering buckets. And the bigger the bucket, the more light you can get. And so the fainter objects and the further you can see out. And the work that you were doing, you weren't changing the information that was coming to you, but you were analysing it in a more detailed way, is that? Yes. With a telescope that large, you get so much light. What you actually want to do is analyse that light. Right.

Speaker 139:17

Bye-bye.

Presenter39:23

And I was working at University College London building an instrument that would actually link up with a telescope called a spectrograph and effectively it just it makes rainbows. So it takes the starlight from billions of miles away, puts it through various optics and then stretches the light out into its rainbow colours. And from that you can actually work out what's happening in the heart of a star. So you can see chemical reactions. You can actually see perhaps clouds of gas between us and the star. And so it gives us very detailed analysis by looking at its rainbow light. Maggie Adarin-Pocock. Now next time with the World Cup taking place in Russia, my guest will be the voice of football, John Watson. I hope you can join us.

Presenter40:12

Uh

Speaker 140:12

This is the BBC.