Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Scientist who popularized science through bestsellers, televised lectures, and The Exploratory; invented robots, deaf aid, telescope.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Sonata No. 30 in E major, Op. 109Favourite
Well, it goes back, as a matter of fact, in a way, to an episode when I was at school. I was at King Alfred's school in Hampstead, and Solomon had been a pupil at King Alfred's, and he used to play to us. We used to sit cross-legged round the piano, and on one amazing occasion, he played us a [Beethoven] sonata, and then he played his thunder music, and he put the Times newspaper in the school's Beckstein piano, which was the pride and joy of the head master. The head master went purple in the face, got very fidgety, stopped Solomon playing and said, Solomon, you really can't put the newspaper in the piano. He took it out. Solomon was absolutely furious. He walked out and never came back.
My parents used to have a great big camp in the summer, but my father had ex-First War World War tents. And about 20 of his friends would have this amazingly huge camp with lots of funny old cars as we would look at them now in Cornwall. And they enacted Abdul Abulbul Amir as a play. And they made armour, and they made swords, and they enacted the duel. And it was in, I think it was Corf Castle. And it set up a local legend of ghosts, because, of course, the villagers would see the flashing armour under the moon. And I believe the ghost story still survives.
Well, I would like to have something rather different associated with H G Wells, who was a big influence on me when I was a boy, as I think everybody in that sort of generation. And I'd very much like to have the theme music of Things to Come, which was written by Arthur Bliss.
Violin Concerto in E major, BWV 1042
Gidon Kremer and the Academy of St Martin in the Fields
Well, I'd very much like some Bach, and I think I'd like the violin concerto in E, and if I may, I'd like it played by the Academy of St. Martins in the Fields.
I think the next piece of music I would like is the Sorcerer's Apprentice, because it makes me think a bit of the exploratory. Uh it's magic, it's a little bit out of control, builds up, and then it's finally controlled by the presence of the magician at the end.
Well, the next record is going to be rather peculiar. It's not exactly music. It's going to be an illusion, a sound illusion. And it was designed or invented by Roger Shepard, who is a psychologist. I know him personally, who lives in California. And if you note, it goes up and up and up, but never actually gets anywhere.
When That I Was and a Little Tiny Boy
Well, I think I would like a Shakespeare song, and I used to sing this in the car to my children when they were very small. I'm not very good at singing, but I can well remember it, and they loved it, and so did I. And I'd like the song When That I Was a Little Tiny Boy.
Nicolai Ghiaurov and Mirella Freni
I think for my last record I'd like to have that absolutely wonderful duet, redolent of life and of passion, in Act One of Mozart's Don Giovanni.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:08Did you and your father seriously intend to fly [the Flying Flea]?
Oh yes, we built it. It took about three years. It was called the Flying Flea and it was designed by a Frenchman called Mignier. And just as we got the thing finished, two people, or maybe three, crashed theirs, and I think two or three people actually got killed that weekend. And we were just learning to fly on a rather bumpy field, and we never got more than about six feet off the ground, which is probably a good thing. It had a design fault, so that if you dived it, it couldn't actually recover.
Presenter asks
2:40Do you think it was in the Gregory genes, your inventiveness, or was it that your father cultivated it in you?
Well it is awfully hard to know. My father was an astronomer. He was the director of an observatory in London. And I was brought up with telescopes and spectroscopes and things like that. And I was always playing about with things and trying to invent things. And it was a sort of way of life, having fun, having games, but also having some sort of purpose I wanted to try to understand by playing about.
Presenter asks
16:24What did you learn from [Sidney Bradford, who regained his sight at fifty-two]?
Yes. Well, we really learnt quite a lot. … we found that he was effectively blind for really a long time to things that he did not already know about through his touch experience while he'd been blind. And the most striking thing, I think, was that he could actually read capital letters, uppercase letters, which he'd learnt in the blind school by touch. … But he couldn't read lowercase letters, which he'd not been taught. So in general, we found that where he could explore the world by touch, that information was immediately available to his eyes as soon as the operations had been performed.
The keepsakes
The book
Patrick Moore
I think I would like to study the stars and commune with the stars. I think of observatories as temples. And I think I'd like to have a really good astronomy book and study the stars more deeply.
The luxury
I think I'll have a telescope, if I may, an astronomical telescope, to study the universe.
Presenter asks
23:05Why do you think so many people [take no interest in the universe]?
Well, I think science can be intimidating. It is inherently difficult. The initial sort of excitement of playing about with things, that's not difficult. But as soon as you really start to sit down and think, you need new concepts. One has to update a lot of the assumptions that one was born with or one was given at school or from one's parents and I'm afraid one's teachers very often. And that sort of rewriting of one's mind is a difficult, often quite a painful thing to do.
“I'm really interested in truth, on trying to find out what the universe is like, how the brain works, what the mind is, and a tool for discovering the nature of truth, how we attain truth, is being very frank and explicit about illusions.”
“I think it's amazing. We've got this incredible universe that we're born into and most people seem to just take no particular interest in it, what it's like. It's like living in a house and not knowing where the dining room is or where the stairs are. It's really an astonishing thing.”
“I think music is very mysterious. I think I understand something of visual illusions, but I feel I understand nothing of the magic of music. I wish I understood it better.”