Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Pioneering mass spectrometrist who studied complex macromolecules in their natural state, advancing drug discovery.
On the island
Eight records
The keepsakes
The book
In conversation
Presenter asks
6:07Tell me about yourself as a little kid. What were you like?
I was inquisitive, probably. 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 explorative, perhaps, better than naughty.
Presenter asks
8:14Tell me a bit more about your relationship with your mother and what she was like.
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. … 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 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.
The luxury
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.
Presenter asks
You passed the 11 plus, but you didn't go to the local grammar school. Why not?
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.
Presenter asks
30:24You started studying for a PhD at the University of Wales, but you didn't finish it. 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.
Presenter asks
37:16What did people around you, your fellow scientists, think about what you were trying to do [keeping proteins folded in the mass spectrometer]?
Well, firstly, they would say it's very odd. 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 learn from them.
Presenter asks
41:28Your win [of the Rosalind Franklin Award] attracted some surprising headlines. What do you remember about what they had to say?
Oh, I remember that one because 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. … 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.
“I was inquisitive, probably. 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.”
“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.”
“I was always feeling like I was the underdog imposter, whatever you like to call it.”
“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.”
“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.”