Professor Dame Carol Robinson

Presenter0:01

BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts. Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

Presenter0:52

My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Dame Carol Robinson. Her pioneering work uses a machine called the Mass Spectrometer, which she's employed in new ways to study complex macromolecules in their natural state, paving the way for innovations in drug discovery and novel ideas about the way our bodies work.

Presenter1:11

Today, she has a global reputation and works at the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, an organisation she founded. She's been awarded scientific prizes from all over the world, is a former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry and was the first female professor of chemistry at both Oxford and Cambridge universities. But her path towards this scientific life of excellence has been unconventional. She left school at 16 and started work as a laboratory technician, studying for her degree in the evenings and at weekends. She took an eight-year career break to bring up her three children against the advice of many of her peers before picking up the mantle once again, achieving scientific breakthroughs and pushing mass spec technology to places previously thought impossible. She says, as a scientist, I've always been quite fearless about going in my own direction. That has been my mantra throughout my career. I never wanted to follow the crowd. Professor Dame Carol Robinson, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you. It's a real pleasure to be here. Carol, we're delighted to have you here. And you are fearless then. Also, I hear extremely competitive. Where does that come from in you, do you think? I think competitive.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson2:22

Competition came really from my sporting career, which was not always that good, but I always liked to run and I always wanted to win, so maybe it's coming from there. And my father would have liked me to be playing at Wimbledon. He was very competitive on my behalf, so he was a good tennis player and I think wanted the same for me.

Presenter2:40

And what about school? You know, I I heard you were quite competitive about your grades.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson2:44

I was competitive at maths. I think that's one of those things where you can sort of start a race to get through all the thumb cards and then people would try and catch me up and then I would push on and

Presenter2:55

Try and maintain my lead.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson2:56

Uh

Presenter2:56

There is a bit of an assumption, Carol, especially among non scientists, that labs are sterile controlled environments. But you've said that labs can be unruly places where magic happens. Tell me more about that. That sounds a bit dangerous.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson3:10

Magic is I suppose it's that breakthrough when you get really excited that something that nobody thought would ever work finally works and you just wow, that's so exciting, it's so um yeah, magic, but magic is unbelievable, whereas this is believable but we never quite thought we would get there, so maybe

Presenter3:32

Magic. Uh

Presenter3:33

You also see a lot of beauty in these spectra, you know, in observing the the data that the mass spectrometer creates. Tell me about that, because I find that very interesting. I'm glad you find it interesting.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson3:44

Most people can't understand why I would find it interesting because you look I'm looking for patterns and I look at peaks and and signals so I yeah I find it quite beautiful when they arise from the sort of noise then out pops these peaks and it's just a magical moment. I do like patterns, I like symmetry, I'm very into understanding patterns and what they're trying to tell me and often we say we can't interpret.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson4:12

A mass spectrum, but that's because we're not thinking about it correctly. So I like that. What's it trying to tell me? What can I

Presenter4:19

I read in these lines. You mentioned being sporty as a kid and your dad encouraging you to go down that route. You are a runner still, I think.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson4:24

You'd go

Professor Dame Carol Robinson4:27

I think. Tell me about that part of it. So running. I was a sprinter at school, so I've always loved running. I think there's a sort of thrill about the speed that you can get from your own body.

Presenter4:29

Of yourself.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson4:38

And then as I got older of course it wasn't very fast at all but I still enjoy it and I like to run. I like to run every other day if I can because I like to think about something in the lab that I can't understand or a meeting I'm going to, you know, what are the points I'm going to make. So it's a time when you work out problems. It is, it is and it's, you know, often people want to run with me and I try and make an excuse because actually I quite like the headspace that I get from running. Do you listen to music? I do, yes, quite often and if I do run with my daughter we have certain tracks that we really like.

Presenter4:54

So it's it's

Presenter5:14

Well, I think on that note, we should dive in then, Professor Dame Carol Robinson, with your first. What's disc number one? So it's gonna be girl on fire.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson5:22

by Alicia Keith, and I find this a very motivating song. It's something I run with my daughter to for a while, and I think it's quite empowering. And if I've got a difficult thing going on, I often play this.

Speaker 25:42

Girl is on fire.

Speaker 25:56

Yeah.

Speaker 25:59

Looks like a girl, but she just played

Speaker 26:04

So bright she can burn your eye

Presenter6:07

Alicia Keys and Girl on Fire. So, Carol Robinson, you were born in Beckenham 1956, the middle child of three. Tell me about yourself as a little kid. What were you like?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson6:19

Hmm.

Presenter6:19

I was inquisitive, probably.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson6:21

So I would break rules by trying to find something out and one day I remember climbing out of my bedroom and sort of escaping out the window and trying to look down on the people on the street just as a sort of different view of the world. My mother came in and was horrified and coaxed me back in and then put bars up on my window. So I think I was

Presenter6:49

Hello.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson6:50

Explorative, perhaps, better than naughty.

Presenter6:53

Okay. So your poor mum finding you on out out the window on the ledge and then having to put bars on the window. It sounds like she had her hands full with you. What was her attitude to this inquisitive little girl that she had? Great.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson7:07

Because she wanted me

Professor Dame Carol Robinson7:10

to be more of a little girl. So she would make me dresses and I would tear them, she would do my hair in curls and I would run around and it would be straight again. Um I think she wanted me to be a proper little girl. And I probably wasn't.

Presenter7:19

And

Presenter7:23

Yeah.

Presenter7:24

And you were, as we've already mentioned, very good at maths from an early age. What did you love about it, and how did that go down with your friends at school? I would have.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson7:34

I have some cards in my bedroom and I'll invite them round, but mostly not interested in coming to my house. But we used to play in alleyways between houses in those days and get up to all sorts of things. So explorative science I'd call it.

Presenter7:49

So Carol, you were one of three, you know, two brothers either side. What was it like for the three of you growing up? What were the family dynamics like?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson7:57

Oh, oh, I idolized my older brother David, I think, and my younger brother I was very protective, Richard.

Presenter8:03

And your mum, was she a homemaker? Was she a home?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson8:07

I mean I always thought she was very smart, but obviously the war came along and they didn't really get the chance to do so much, but she was

Presenter8:14

Yeah, she was at home. So, and she had, by the sounds of it, quite a traditional outlook. She did. Tell me a bit more about your relationship and what she was.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson8:19

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson8:21

It was an okay relationship. I don't think we always saw either I I never really felt she was all that proud of my career. She would have preferred me to be the mother at home with my children and I was starting to move on. I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to have both things, I want to have my career and my family and I think she didn't think that was great.

Speaker 18:41

Mm.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson8:44

You said that she was very shy herself. She was, yes. She kind of visited that on me quite a bit, quite self-conscious person.

Speaker 18:52

Mm-hmm.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson8:53

She would always say to me, Um, don't show off, don't put yourself forward for things. At one time I was chosen for the lead part in a play and she said, Oh, you don't want to do that, be showing off I was oh, I thought it would be good So there was that kind of conflict between us, I think and If ever I gave a lecture, she would say, Well, how can you give a lecture? You're so quiet and I said, No, I can get there, I can do this But I think that did undermine my confidence quite a bit my early career. I don't think she

Presenter9:20

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:22

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson9:22

Mm. Okay, just

Presenter9:22

Steadfast. And well, and it sounds like it was her own her own anxiety actually projected onto you rather than really who you were. Yeah, I think that.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson9:31

That was true because she was very self conscious and her father when we went there we would just sit there and we weren't allowed to say anything, you know, it was very austere sort of upbringing and used to sit there with a nice dress and behave.

Presenter9:40

Uh

Presenter9:45

I mean, she got to see some incredible success in your career, and she did celebrate some of it. I know that there was one moment that she marked with a gift to you.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson9:54

Two.

Presenter9:55

I think it's a very good idea.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson9:55

Wearing it today. It's a watch that she gave me and I was actually so surprised because I became a Royal Society Research Fellow and this is the sort of junior fellowship that you get. And I was so happy because it was an independent career for me. You know, it meant I could start my own group. And I remember thinking, well, that's the biggest award I'm ever going to get. And she said, oh, we must market because my father had sadly passed. She said, he would have been proud. We must buy you a watch. And so she bought me a watch that she couldn't afford really. But I'm so happy that she did because it's a great memory.

Presenter10:33

And then, you know, you went on to be the the head of the Royal Society of Chemistry. So, you know, many more kind of landmark kind of thing else.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson10:39

Landmark anything else. But we just marked the first one because we thought that would be it.

Presenter10:44

You thought you got to the top of the harder, but eventually.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson10:46

Yeah, the potential.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson10:48

I thought, oh, this is amazing. I never thought I'd get this and then

Presenter10:51

And because, yeah.

Presenter10:53

Let's have some more music, Carol. This is your second choice today. Tell me about track number two.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson10:58

Yeah, so She's Leaving Home I think is a sort of beautiful narrative tale by the Beatles and it reminds me of when I left home and my mother was clearly upset and then my, all three of my children, I found it quite heartbreaking when they left home, although of course I was proud of them and they were all going off to university and you sort of hold it together and say, oh, it's fabulous, go and enjoy yourself and then sort of cry all the way home. But you know, it just always reminds me of those moments. I think it's a really great, beautiful record.

Speaker 211:27

Uh She we gave her most of our lives Ms. Levin sacrificed most of our lives

Speaker 211:39

We gave her everything money could buy She's leaving home after living alive for so many years

Speaker 211:51

Yeah.

Speaker 211:53

Father snores as his wife

Presenter11:56

The Beatles and She's Leaving Home. So, Carol Robinson, we've heard about your mum. Tell me a little bit about your father, Dennis. He worked in insurance. Is that what he'd wanted to do with his life? No, he always said

Professor Dame Carol Robinson12:08

You don't really do that because you've got a vocation for doing it. You just do that because he wanted to be a vet and then of course the war and either that or a professional tennis player, but neither of those came along, so he went into insurance. Uh

Presenter12:22

Do you know much about his wartime experiences?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson12:25

No, he never talked about it, and I guess he the only time he talked about it was when he was teaching me to drive, which was always um an angst moment. And um he would say, Well,

Presenter12:27

That night

Professor Dame Carol Robinson12:37

Don't argue because I taught people to drive tanks. So yeah, but I've got a mini, it's not the same. And so the whole sort of father-daughter thing broke down during driving lessons, I would say. But he was quite, I guess, quite modest, didn't really talk about it. I always think he was very smart. He came very high up in the grammar school rankings, you know, so I was super proud of him. But, you know, he never really talked about it or unfortunately had the opportunity to make much of it and then went into insurance, which was he told me he never really wanted to go into insurance. That's just what you do and there isn't anything else open to you.

Presenter13:17

And did he did he ever talk to you or allude to the frustrations that he had about those lost opportunities?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson13:25

No, sadly not. I think he didn't really open up to uh sometimes I like to think he would and I'd try and engineer opportunities where we would talk but he was quite a closed person I think.

Presenter13:38

Yes, and you've already used the word modest, which obviously chimes with your mum. Sounds like they were quite similar personalities then.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson13:46

They were and they They played tennis together and, you know, I think they were happy-ish as much as can be expected. And uh my mother managed to get him as her tennis partner, so she was good at math. She worked out how the draw was gonna go and when they met, yes, that's how she did it. She worked out how the draw was gonna be

Presenter14:00

It's been when they met, it's how they met.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:07

done and then sort of fixed it so that she would be his partner, which I like that story because it shows that she was actually not as modest and as quiet as I thought she was.

Presenter14:16

Strategic, I love that. So when you were ten, the family moved to Folkestone. Did that new environment broaden your horizons?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:17

I love that.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:23

Yeah.

Presenter14:24

Did I

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:24

Oh, do you remember?

Presenter14:26

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:26

You know, being brought up in back-to-back streets and then having countryside and the sea and the Romney marsh, it was beautiful. So I suddenly started being very interested in nature, collecting lots of different plants. I'd never seen them like this before. I just had the park, which was grass, and the garden, which was small. But then suddenly I thought, oh, wow, look at all of this, and picked them all and brought them home and identified them all. It became a bit scientific because I started putting them into classes and sorting it.

Presenter14:56

And what about animals? You said, you know, fantastic shells and

Professor Dame Carol Robinson14:57

Yeah, I did. And then I started to have almost like a mini zoo, which didn't go down very well, but I did like breeding animals. Well, they would breed themselves. I just gave them the opportunities and we used to buy mice five p each and put them in a thing and then see what you had. It was quite an experiment actually because you could get some beautiful crossings going on. I always cared for them though. I didn't mistreat them in any way.

Presenter15:24

What was in the Mini zoo then, so you

Professor Dame Carol Robinson15:25

We had mice, had mice, rabbits, guinea pigs and hamsters.

Presenter15:29

You said, Carol, that your friends weren't that interested in doing competitive maths with you, but maybe the menagerie encouraged them to come and visit.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson15:38

A little, but not as much as I'd hoped. And I'd made signs, I'd put things up on all the cages. I thought you might be interested in the names of all these animals, but no, not really, no. Were you quite solitary then? Potentially, I think I sadly. And it did bother me because I would see other people who were much more popular than me, and maybe didn't have weird things going on, like menageries and some cards. So, yeah, I had some close friends, but I wasn't like the popular girl in the class.

Presenter16:09

And when were you happiest, do you think, as a little girl?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson16:11

Perhaps when I was out with my father at the tennis we would go and watch something at Wimbledon. He would go on the outside courts and so that was super exciting. So yeah, I guess.

Presenter16:22

I think I enjoyed those days.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson16:23

Uh

Presenter16:23

Let's have some more music, Carol. It's your third choice today. What are we going to hear next?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson16:28

Growing up with my children, every Saturday was influenced by how Sunderland Football Club did, which as you know can be a bit up and down. But this tune, when they run out onto the pitch, just is so moving for me. So it is Dance of the Nights from Procoffia's Romeo and Juliet. And how did you come to support Sunderland? My husband, the father of my three children, is from Sunderland and I think you cannot get away from supporting Sunderland if you have that in your bones.

Presenter18:01

The Dance of the Night from Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet, performed by the London Symphony Orchestra and conducted by Claudio Abado.

Presenter18:09

Cara Robinson, you passed the 11 plus, but you didn't go to the local grammar school. Why not?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson18:15

Well this was really my father's choice. He felt that if I went to the grammar school I would learn Latin and all good things. But if I went to the technical school I would learn a skill set that would get me a job. So he was keen that I did needlework, cookery, typing, all of these things that at that time had a lot of cachet I guess. And my brothers were really expected to do extremely well and they didn't really care what I did. It was in some ways you know I wasn't under any pressure so that was quite good for me and I could just do what I wanted. I was a bit under the radar.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson18:52

It wasn't in our plan for her to go to the grammar school. She could go there and she could do this type of

Presenter18:56

How did you feel about that and how did you feel about that attitude?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson18:59

Did you resist it? Or no, I don't think I knew any better actually, because my mother said, well, you know, being a secretary is a very good job, and typing and sewing.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson19:09

and cooking, these are all skills that you're going to need and I didn't really challenge it.

Presenter19:14

You went to the technical high school then in Folkestone. Tell me about your time there. How do you look back at it? I look back at it.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson19:20

Very odd place, to be honest. Why did I learn how to set a tea tray that had all the cups in the same direction? And it was almost like we were supposed to be at a finishing school, but

Presenter19:32

We weren't. And what about the academic subjects? Because you did have some of those. And I know you enjoyed chemistry lessons with your teacher, Mr. Leicester. Oh, yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson19:40

It was great. So we had not good chemistry for a long time and I thought it was really not an interesting subject at all. And then we had a newly qualified teacher come in, Mr Leicester. He was very good looking, very sort of dashing, and we all thought, Well, let's work hard. Suddenly chemistry was the thing. We all loved it.

Presenter19:55

Chemistry was the thing.

Speaker 119:56

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson19:59

I guess it doesn't matter where your motivation comes from, if you get interested you will work at it. And this is when I started looking at the periodic table because he introduced it, but he introduced only what we needed. And then I told I'll tell him a few things that he doesn't think I know. And then he would say, No, stop, stop going there. Just keep him within the syllabus. But I had one in my bedroom and I would

Speaker 120:12

M

Professor Dame Carol Robinson20:22

I don't know how much to go into this, but elements on the left and elements on the right of the table and how they would interact and what would happen to their atomic structures. And I drew it all out in books and things and I was super excited. I thought, oh, it's such a logical subject. I love it. So you thought you'd discovered this. You didn't know that it was already known. It's been known for hundreds of years, but you hadn't been taught it. No, I hadn't. It wasn't so much that it hadn't been discovered. It was more, oh, I remember thinking, oh, there's patterns arising here. You know, I can see why this goes here and this goes here. And because he told me, well, just think of it as waxy things interacting with, you know, hard things or something. And I just thought, well, it can't be like that. There must be something that's governing this. It can't just be that those things like those. Why? Why do they like them? And so I remember trying to work all that out.

Presenter20:44

I mean

Speaker 120:53

T

Presenter21:14

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson21:14

Uh

Presenter21:14

Got back in touch with him.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson21:15

Yeah.

Presenter21:16

And it's not

Professor Dame Carol Robinson21:16

What did you say and what did you think about the career that you chose? I wrote and said, oh, you probably found me a bit annoying, you know, at the back of your class. And he said, of course I remember you. And I shall follow your career with much interest. So if he's listening, you know, he really started a great career for me.

Presenter21:32

So you left school, Carol, when you were sixteen and you did pass some O levels. Why did you want to leave instead of carrying on in education?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson21:41

I didn't think that people who stayed on did very well at art school. I mean there were examples, but there used to be announced from the stage and as so-and-so's got into university and we'd all clap and it would be amazing. But hardly anybody did. And I just remember thinking, well, I probably won't be one of those girls that makes it. So I might as well start working now and see what happens. And were your parents keen for you to?

Presenter22:04

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson22:04

Leave or would they have liked you to stay on?

Presenter22:06

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson22:06

I don't really think they had any idea what I was going to do and I didn't really either, but I saw in the local paper.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson22:15

An advert for Pfizer, and I thought I could do that. I like chemistry, I'll do that and see what happens. And also, I needed.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson22:22

I needed a bus, I was only just 16, couldn't drive, and there was a bus to Pfizer. I thought that's the job I'm going to try and get.

Presenter22:30

Well, we'll find out where that bus and that new job took you next. But first I think we'd better hear disc number four, please. Carol Robinson, what's it gonna be? It's Sonnet.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson22:40

The verb, and I like this because it reminds me of all the friends in my life and how important those people are to you as you go through different phases of your life.

Speaker 222:51

My friend and me looking through her red box of memory

Speaker 223:01

Feed it, I'm sure.

Speaker 223:04

Love seems to stick in a veins, you know

Speaker 223:12

Yes, there's love that you want it. Don't sound like a sonic.

Presenter23:20

The verb and sonnet.

Presenter23:23

So Carol, let's talk about what happened after you left school. You answered an ad to be a gas liquid chromatographer at Pfizer, the Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Corporation. What exactly is a gas liquid?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson23:34

Chromatographer. I just thought it was an amazing sounding name, but then it turned out to be not very interesting. It was actually an instrument that you put in a potential drug here, and at the end, you'd just have a peek and another sort of shape. And I remember thinking, well, there must be a reason why some things go through very fast and some things go much more slowly. I'll try and work it out. I'll try and make the job interesting because basically I could do the job and you know a machine could have done the job. I didn't really need to do much. I dissolve it, put it in and then read the results. But trying to work out why, I started this notebook of observations and that for me was good because people around me noticed my book of observations.

Presenter24:21

And it was so then in this role as a lab technician, you were kind of rotated around the different labs at Pfizer. So at what point do you come across the the mass spectrometer? Yes, so walk ten is

Professor Dame Carol Robinson24:24

See?

Speaker 124:24

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson24:27

From the different labs.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson24:33

The room was filled with this instrument, it was huge in those days. And I thought, wow, this is amazing. It reminded me of some sort of car showroom on its side or something, and all these bits and glowing valves and flashing lights. And it was really exciting. I can't describe it. And you would look down the oscilloscope and your peaks would arrive. And yeah, it was this stuff of dreams, really.

Presenter24:59

So, and the oscilloscope, so that's the little viewing. That's right, yeah, flaming port. Yes.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:04

Flaring

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:06

Uh

Presenter25:06

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:06

Uh

Presenter25:06

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:06

Your window into the world is there. And what exactly does the mass spectrometer do? So it tells you the mass of all the things that are in that particular sample that you're analysing. So if, for example, it was a chemist who'd made something in a synthesis, so he's trying to make a candidate drug, then he would give this to me and I would inject it into the instrument.

Presenter25:08

But

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:28

And then the peaks would appear. And then by in those days we would have to count all of the different masses by hand and work out what was what.

Presenter25:38

It was very satisfying. So you enjoyed that right from the off. And the machine in those days was quite temperamental, wasn't it? But you were you were good with it. I was well, I don't know if I was.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:41

And data.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson25:47

I was good with it, I was very patient with it and I loved it and so I, yeah, a bit like my temperamental mini, so I was always fixing it and trying to make it tune it and make it better. So I felt an affinity for the instrument that and I would have you know many electric shocks, you wouldn't get them so much now, but I'd have shocks and I'd one day I was sort of my foot got sort of stuck in one of the electronic drawers and then there was a great big flash and you know, so big shock and I was sent back in my seat. So yes, lots of things happen that don't happen anymore.

Presenter26:19

And still you can

Professor Dame Carol Robinson26:19

Uh

Presenter26:19

Uh Oh yeah

Professor Dame Carol Robinson26:20

Yeah, still liking it. Well, you know, that was its way of telling me, don't put your feet up.

Presenter26:25

That's not a good place. The technology was quite new back then, a new era certainly for scientists in the UK. What was the data that was being produced actually used for?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson26:35

So initially we were using it to work out what small molecules had been synthesised by chemists, research chemists. You could also look at metabolites, so how drugs were broken down in the body. It was used for that as well. And then later it was moved into proteins and proteomics so we could tell all of the proteins in human cells for example.

Presenter26:59

And your aptitude was spotted quite quickly by a supervisor who described you having green fingers. And was he the person who encouraged you to go back to college and pursue your education?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson27:11

Yeah.

Presenter27:11

I mean

Professor Dame Carol Robinson27:11

I had this thing that if I couldn't get a spectrum I would work and work and work until I did and I think a lot of times people would just say oh it's not working and give the sample back and just say that yeah sorry tried everything not going to fly or it's not going to work but I was oh no there's other things we can do let's try this let's try that so I think he was impressed with that

Presenter27:33

Let's have some more music, Carol. It's your fifth choice today. What are we going to hear next and why are you taking it with you today?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson27:38

This disc, Wild Horses, the Rolling Stones, is when I met my second husband, David, and he sent me this track and I thought it had a really nice meaning behind it. How did you meet the two of you? Oh, we met at the Vice-Chancellor's house. I think she knows that, the current Vice-Chancellor. I was being introduced as a new professor in Oxford and he was there representing the Medical Sciences Division. Actually, at first I thought he was just showing me around as a fellow scientist and then I realised that we had more in common than just a scientific background.

Speaker 228:15

I could live.

Speaker 228:22

Is it easy to take?

Speaker 228:29

They

Speaker 228:31

What?

Speaker 228:36

I've got them for you.

Presenter28:43

The Rolling Stones and Wild Horses. So Carol Robinson, you studied for a national certificate, then a higher national certificate, and then you got a degree from Medway College of Technology. All of that took seven years. How did you manage your studies while holding down a full time job?

Presenter29:01

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson29:01

Yeah, I sometimes wonder that. I worked every evening pretty much and then I did work weekends and work kind of thing. I started to feel not having a degree was quite a big disadvantage because the people around me at Pfizer who had degrees were treated much better and given much more credit for things. So I started to feel it was all a bit unfair and if I wanted to this is the competing bit again I guess but if I wanted to compete I better get myself a degree. And even when I got the part-time degree I still felt that they valued somebody who'd gone through the proper route or the other route I guess is the way to put it.

Presenter29:07

What was driving you?

Presenter29:39

Boom.

Presenter29:42

So you left Pfizer in 1979 after graduating. Why did you decide to leave?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson29:49

Uh

Presenter29:49

Yeah. Because of

Professor Dame Carol Robinson29:49

That whole issue of, you know, you're a graduate but you're not one of the better graduates who've been to proper university, you've done a part-time course. I actually thought I had much more of a skill set because I'd been working for seven years, but that sort of argument didn't really wash. New graduate coming in was immediately on a different scale to the technicians.

Presenter30:10

And even though presumably you'd be showing them how this machine worked and how to get the best

Professor Dame Carol Robinson30:14

Yes, constantly I was training new people and constantly they were on this other scheme to me, you know, and I thought this I'm gonna make a difference here, I'm gonna go.

Presenter30:14

Yeah.

Presenter30:24

So Carol, you started studying for a PhD at the University of Wales, but you didn't finish it.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson30:30

Why not? That was quite a tough time for me. That was a very male-dominated era in the lab where everyone was expected to pitch in and lift a gas cylinder and there would be no difference between the men and the women in the lab. So just expected to do things you physically couldn't. And I would often be walking home at two in the morning or something because the machine had broken. Or I would sleep on the machine, really. I don't know how I did that, but I just put my head on it. I was so tired I'd sleep. And I wasn't allowed to work in the day. Only postdoctoral researchers were allowed to work on the day. So I would start at six and I was expected to hand over the machine still working at 8am the following morning, having had a pot noodle in the lab. That's what we used to eat.

Presenter30:45

I didn't mind that.

Presenter31:13

Having

Presenter31:16

It doesn't sound like you were getting a lot of support then from your lecturers. I mean, if you were.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson31:22

It was quite lonely and I really I became ill, I had glandular fever because I was working so hard, anti-social hours and not sleeping properly and so I applied to various places, could I come and do a PhD? And then I was very fortunate. Ian Howe was my supervisor, second supervisor, and he said I'll have a word with somebody at Cambridge and then very fortunately they accepted me.

Presenter31:50

Me, so that's amazing, isn't it? It is amazing. What's even more amazing is that PhDs, which generally take three to six years to complete, you've finished yours in two. Yeah, that's because.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson32:00

Because I'd wasted a year's money in sw well, not wasted, spent a year's money already, so it's a three year thing. I'd already had one year, so I had to do it in two. I I think I was trying to prove myself as well. I was always feeling like I was the underdog imposter, whatever you like to call it.

Presenter32:18

Tell me about the first hall dinner.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson32:20

The first whole dinner was terrible. Homemade dress and sitting at the high table and the question was where was your first degree? And everyone were very high ranking universities and I said, oh well I made way maidston college and part-time and oh was it a correspondence course? No, it's a proper registered course but everyone starts laughing and it's oh could you row? How did you get in? Or oh maybe the lecturer quite fancied you it was so demeaning, so embarrassing and this time the whole table's kind of laughing and I'm feeling two inches high and and I remember saying that's it I'll never, never go to another dinner ever in my whole life. Did you? Of course I've been to many and now I host them and and now I make people feel very I hope very included. What does it matter? Why do we care? Why do we care what degree, you know, you're here, it's wonderful, let's celebrate. And I never ask people those sorts of questions'cause I know

Presenter33:00

Uh Yeah.

Speaker 133:07

Uh

Presenter33:07

Too many.

Speaker 133:07

Yeah.

Presenter33:22

How it can feel. Alright, Carol, let's have some more music. It's your sixth choice today. What's next and why?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson33:28

I've chosen Golden Brown by the Stranglers because I was fortunate enough to go to a May Ball while I was at Cambridge and again this was something I never thought you know I'd be able to afford or anything like that but somebody said to me oh I've got a spare ticket would you like to come so I'd love to and quickly rocked up a dress and went and so what was the dress like did you make it I did talk me through it a sheath of silk and then because I like shape and asymmetry I thought it was quite a good design and does this music take you back there this way so the Stranglers had played at King's College Cambridge not while I was there but it became a sort of anthem of that college and that's where I went and this was played a lot so it reminds me of that beautiful summer in the dress that didn't fall off and had a great time

Speaker 233:32

Uh

Presenter33:48

What was the dress like to

Speaker 234:18

Golden brown, texture like sun Lays me down with my mind she runs Throughout the night, no need to fight Never a frown with golden brown

Speaker 234:37

Every time, just like the last, on her ship tied to the mast, Two distant lands takes

Presenter34:47

The Stranglers and Golden Brown. So Carol Robinson, you got married in 1982 for the first time. You had your first child the following year and then went on to have two more children and you decided to take a career break until they were established at school. That lasted for eight years. Was that a difficult decision for you to put your professional dreams on hold after working so hard to get your qualifications?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson35:13

No, it's an interesting thing. I've never once regretted that and people think I should have or why didn't I, but I loved having my three children. I had Stuart, then Paula and Colin, and watching their interactions and their development was one of the best times, I would say.

Presenter35:30

So once the kids have reached school age, you saw a job advertised that pretty much had your name all over it. How did you spot the ad?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson35:37

Yes, so they were I'd taken them to as I often did to story time. Quiet time for me, reading the back of the new scientist and there was a job at Oxford. So this in the library? It was, the local public library. And there was this advert mass spectrometrist required at Oxford.

Presenter35:55

Wow, that is me. Nice faith intervening. It was.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson35:59

Game.

Presenter36:00

So tell me about the job and also how you were feeling about it because, you know, I would guess eight years is a long time in in science. Had you been able to keep up with what was happening?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:07

Mm-hmm.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:10

Well, I tried to keep up, but I wasn't very well prepared. I talked about my PhD, which was eight years out of date, and they had a current person interviewing against me, so I felt he's gonna get it, not me, but I really tried, I really tried in that interview, and and they showed me a sp

Presenter36:29

Spectrum and I was off. So you started working as a post-doctoral research fellow at Oxford University and you were reunited with the mass spectrometer, your beloved machine. You started looking into bigger molecules, including proteins. Now, forgive me for trying to simplify this, Carol, but the challenge was to keep the proteins folded once they went into the machine. Why was that so important?

Speaker 136:37

What's that?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:53

Uh

Presenter36:53

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:53

Yeah.

Presenter36:53

So

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:53

Uh

Presenter36:54

Sip

Professor Dame Carol Robinson36:54

Proteins would go in and most people didn't mind if they unfolded and became like a linear string, but I wanted them to be coiled and folded and curled because those folded states are the ones that interact with other proteins. So I was thinking if I could just keep that, then I'll learn about its friends and neighbours and all the things that are close by in the cell.

Presenter37:16

So the key was to keep the proteins folded, but that meant the spectrum wasn't as clear when it came out of the machine. So it was this trade off and you were determined to preserve the folded state. What did people around you, your fellow scientists, think about what you were trying to do? Well, firstly, they would say it's very odd.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson37:21

When it came out of the machine.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson37:34

Why do you want those peaks to look so fat and so broad? Well, they could be sharp and if you denatured it like this, then you would get much better spectra. I said, I know that, but I don't I don't want to do that. I want it to be like this. So you want to see these proteins in their natural state? I do. And I don't mind if they've got other things attached to them which make them look a bit ugly. That's all part of their charm. So let's see what we can.

Presenter38:00

and learn from them.

Presenter38:01

So the prevailing belief at the time was that proteins couldn't maintain their structure outside of water, but you showed that proteins in their folded states could be preserved in what's known as the gas phase, and that was pioneering discovery. How did you manage to get them to maintain their structure and still get the information that you needed?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson38:21

What we were trying to do was to cool them to so they didn't have so much energy that they would start unfolding, kind of keep them as cool as you possibly could, transition them into the gas phase in a very cool solution in which they were happy and then don't disturb them too much, don't excite them too much, keep them calm and cool and keep them happy flying along in a folded state. How did you feel making that breakthrough? I do remember these days. I remember thinking, oh wow, that's so exciting. But then no one was excited. And I remember being quite disappointed by that. I was thinking, can't you see? Look what we could learn. And they're just, oh, we don't really need that. We've got other ways of doing it. We're not really interested. And so that's always a bit sort of a down time because I remember thinking, but surely this is so exciting. And why doesn't no one else think so except me?

Presenter39:14

So you were the lone voice at that point. I mean, what about the manufacturers of the mass spectrometer? What do they think?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson39:23

Exactly. And I remember them saying to me.

Presenter39:23

Fact

Professor Dame Carol Robinson39:26

Why don't you just do what everybody else does? I said, because I don't want to. And they say, oh, you're like some kind of a witch that comes in with these magic spells to get the instrument to work in a different way. Oh, is that how you see me? I'm just trying to do what I'm interested in. And I remember being a bit frustrated because I'd go to a manufacturer and they said, no, no, we've engineered it to do this. And I'd say, but I want to do this. And we'd have a small discussion or disagreement, I'm not sure. And then I'd said, well, I want a valve here so that I can adjust the pressure here. And they said, well, that's not necessary. I said, no, if you don't give me that valve, I'll put a drill in it and make my own valve. And they said, no, no, you're not putting a drill to it. So, yeah, we had conflict there, I guess. So they would modify it for you to the end. And then people would say, oh, I want a Carl Robinson mass back. So it wasn't so bad.

Presenter40:13

So the end starts.

Presenter40:20

Well, we'll find out what it revealed next. But first, I think we'd better have some more music. Your seventh choice today. What's it going to be, Carol?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson40:27

Stairway to Heaven, I'm sure you've had that lots of times by Led Zeppelin and this was a tune that we played at our wedding and it was for me very moving and yeah, I love this music. This is your second wedding then Carol. Where did you get married? Oh we got married in a stately home just outside Oxford and my son and David's daughter did readings and my elder son gave me away as they say and my first granddaughter followed me down in her tiny dress. So she was just a flower girl.

Speaker 240:57

So she was just a flower girl?

Speaker 241:01

There's a lady who shore

Speaker 241:04

All it glitters is gold, and she's buying the stairway to heal.

Speaker 241:14

When she gets there she knows.

Speaker 241:17

If the stores are all closed, With a word she can get, what she can

Presenter41:28

Led Zeppelin and Stairway to Heaven. So Carol Robinson, you became the first female professor of chemistry at Cambridge in two thousand one, and you won the Rosalind Franklin Award from the Royal Society a few years after that. Your win, though, attracted some surprising headlines. What do you remember about what they had to say? Oh, I remember that one because

Professor Dame Carol Robinson41:48

It did say mother wins prize rather than scientist wins prize and the woman who's writing the article called me and said I see it comes with 30,000 that's a lot of shoes and I really felt she was trying to provoke some kind of a comment from me which was not not great.

Speaker 142:09

How did he react?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson42:12

I think I just ignored that thing and didn't answer. But if it was a man, it would be a pioneering scientist Wins Top Award or something, wherever it went. That's a mother. She's won a prize. It's amazing. What did you win it for?

Presenter42:24

Oh, the mass spectrometer. Very nice.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson42:25

Safari

Presenter42:26

So tell me a little bit about the potential medical applications of your research.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson42:31

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson42:32

Yeah, so I remember we were looking at these small molecules and then there were targets that they interacted with and they were the proteins that we'd managed to get to fly and these particular proteins were ones that are in the membranes of our cells and so they actually need like a giant soap bubble to flow through the mass spectrometer because they're not happy just being in water or aquis. So you have to have a detergent or a soap. You push that through and I remember thinking these are the targets of 50% of drugs. If we can learn ways to read what they're telling us, we could learn much more about these drug targets.

Presenter43:12

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson43:12

And which diseases are we talking about? So these are hormonal imbalances. So one of the ones that we're looking at is an androgen surge. Could we control that? This would really help with fertility problems. So yeah, I'm super excited about this.

Presenter43:29

In twenty twenty one, you founded an institute to study, among other things, brain and mental health, infectious diseases and malaria. It's called the Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery, and I know that its name has a very special meaning and says a lot about your approach to science and the people who work in it.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson43:47

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson43:49

I've worked in a lot of different places and seen a lot of different labs and a lot of different cultures. And then I decided I would make it be the institute that I'd always wanted to work in when I was younger. So it's Kind, the subliminal message, Kavli Institute for Nanoscience Discovery. And that's to spell this message that I want you to be considerate, be supportive, be collaborative, and really evolve this culture where everybody's supported and enjoying their work.

Presenter44:21

So those are the values, is it true that you used to cook for the team?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson44:24

I do cook for the team, yeah. I don't know how you found that, yeah. I cooked for the team only last week. A barbecue for thirty people, yeah. Yeah, no, I quite like it because I think it's um it's a way of sort of saying I appreciate all the things that you do and um yeah, take the day off and start cooking early and hope that it turns out

Presenter44:30

Barsecution.

Presenter44:45

Okay. Thank goodness you did all that domestic violence at school, Carol. Comes in handy.

Presenter44:50

Carol, you're also incredibly tenacious in the lab, and you've got expressions that keep you going when you're up against it. What do you say to the team?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson44:59

It's not working yet. And the yet is the critical work. A lot of times people say, oh, it's not working. And I say, okay, you mean it's not working yet. You haven't quite found the sweet spot. You haven't quite got the conditions right. We will find what we need to do. So yet is the key word. Carol, I'm about to cast you away to the island. What will you miss the most?

Presenter45:21

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson45:22

As you pointed out, I was quite shy and quite alone a person, but I've become much more sociable as I've got older and I have quite a a lot of friends and and family of course and I'll be very sad to miss them a lot. Particularly I now have four wonderful grandchildren and I won't see them growing up so yeah, it's a bit cruel to cast

Presenter45:42

Me away, to be honest. Sorry about that. Well, we'll let you take one more track before you go to your eighth choice today. Your final disc. What is it?

Professor Dame Carol Robinson45:50

Yes, I'd chosen The Scientist by Coldplay because I wanted something for all the scientists I've ever worked with. And this isn't quite right because it's about breakup, but it does have in it no one ever said it would be easy. And that's something I often say to my group. We don't do it because it's easy. We do it because we want to find out the answer. So this kind of resonates with me.

Speaker 246:15

Running in circles, coming in tails, heads on a silence apart

Speaker 246:27

Nobody said it was easy.

Speaker 246:34

It's such a shame for us to part.

Speaker 246:41

Nobody said it was

Presenter46:45

Coldplay and the scientist, the perfect choice for you, Carol Robinson. So it's time I'm gonna cast you away to the island, Carol. I'll give you the books, of course, the Bible, the complete works of Shakespeare, and one other book. What will that be? So I'm gonna take the.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson46:59

A herbal apothecary. I think I'll be surrounded by plants and flowers and I will have a lot of fun trying to identify them and then making concoctions from them. It's something I like to do. I read a beautiful recipe in there where she took all these flowers and then made a sort of foot bath and I thought, oh actually I quite like the sound of that, making potions.

Presenter47:24

I'll cool you down on the island, I think.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:26

See?

Presenter47:27

Yes, that sounds all right. Okay, you can have that. You can also have a luxury item.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:27

Yes, that sounds all right. Okay.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:29

Uh

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:30

What will that be? Well, this is one you won't have heard of, I don't think. A portable mass spectrometer.

Presenter47:36

I think

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:36

Yeah.

Presenter47:37

Oh, it'd be so sad not to have one. This is a first. Okay. Now, the deal with the luxury item, Carol, is that it's not supposed to be practical.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:38

This

Presenter47:44

Well yeah, it's a bit practical, but you can see the beauty.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:44

Oh yes

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:46

But I don't know if you're not sure.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson47:48

In the spectra. I can, I can, and I feel that together with my book of how to make things, I could then study them in my portable mass spectrometer.

Presenter47:59

So it's not really practical, it is a luxury. I tell you it's a luxury.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson48:01

Yeah, it's a luxury.

Presenter48:02

It's sensory stimulation, with artistic exploration, expanding of the mind. And if I made things.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson48:08

things and I couldn't look at them in the mass back view, I would be sad.

Presenter48:12

Yeah.

Professor Dame Carol Robinson48:12

I don't want that. It's a happy thing.

Presenter48:14

Well, you've talked me round. It's yours. And finally, which one track of the eight that you've shared with us today would you save from the waves first, if you had to? I think it would be the stairway to heaven because it moves me every time. Professor Dame Carol Robinson, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. It's been my pleasure.

Presenter48:56

Hello, I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Carol, and I'm very pleased she's got some scientific pursuits in mind on the island. I especially like the sound of a footbaff. We've cast away many scientists, including Professor Dame Ijomo Ochebu, Professor Brian Cox, and NASA's Dr. Nikki Fox. The studio manager for today's programme was Sarah Hockley, the assistant producer was Christine Pavlovsky, the executive production coordinator was Susie Roylands, the content editor was Mugabe Turia, and the producer was Paula McGinley. Next time, my guest will be the former England rugby player Maggie Alfonsi. I do hope you'll join us.

Speaker 149:40

I'm Rory Stewart and I want to talk about heroes. When I was a child I imagined a heroic future for myself in which I would achieve great things and die sacrificing my life for a noble cause before I was thirty.

Speaker 149:53

But my experiences in the Middle East and in politics showed me that there was something deeply wrong with my idea of heroism.

Speaker 150:01

From BBC Radio 4, my podcast, The Long History of Heroism, explores ideas of what it meant to be a hero through time. How have these ideas changed? Who are the heroes we need today? Listen to Rory Stewart, The Long History of Heroism, first on BBC Sounds.