Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
An engineer who pioneered silicon chip development at Cambridge, later returning as Vice-Chancellor to forge industry-university partnerships.
On the island
Eight records
The Trumpet Shall Sound (from Messiah)
Neal Davies, Gabrieli Consort & Players, conducted by Paul McCreesh
And this is how I got into Cambridge. I came over from Australia in nineteen sixty, and on a rather bleak, I think, January or February morning, the choral tests for choral scholarships were held in King's Chapel, and I chose this as my test piece.
Keith Brion and his New Sousa Band
When I was at school, because I was musical, I suppose, somebody came up to me and they were looking for people for the band, and so I was drawn in and asked to play the tuba. The funny thing at the time was, and my father treasured a picture of me at this time. I was very small, I'm quite small now, but when I played this tuba and marched down the streets of Melbourne once with the school band, all you could see was the tuba and two legs underneath it.
Agnus Dei (from Requiem, Op. 48)
Choir of King's College, Cambridge, New Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Sir David Willcocks
Record number three really takes me back to early days in Australia and singing. I think that one of the most lyrical pieces of choral music that I ever sung is the Agnes Dave from Forays Requiem.
Kris Kristofferson, Fred Foster
Well, record number four sort of takes me across the Atlantic because when we went to America we landed in that sixties era, you remember, with uh the Vietnam War and all the rest of that business. And there was something about America as well, the freedom, and one person we listened to quite a lot who represented that time in many ways is Janice Joplin.
Waltz in A-flat major, Op. 64, No. 3
My next record takes me back to my mother. She was a pianist. She went to the Royal Academy here, and was a very fine pianist, won a lot of the competitions at the Academy. And she played Chopin a lot.
The Köln Concert: Bremen, July 12, 1973 (Part IIa)
I've chosen part of what he played during a concert he gave in Bremen in nineteen seventy three, where he's been playing very monotonously on one note or around one note, and then breaks into the most wonderful sort of lyrical jazz.
L'aïo dè rotso (from Chants d'Auvergne)
Natania Davrath, conducted by Pierre de la Roche
Well, record number seven is a song from the Auvergne. My wife Mary loves these these songs and used to listen to them a great deal. So I I'd always have one of these along to remind me of of her.
Mir ist so wunderbar (from Fidelio)Favourite
Well, my last record is the what some people refer to as the Canon Quartet from Act One of Beethoven's Fidelio. I think it's one of the most beautiful and lyrical pieces of music ever written.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:53Which side gives you the most trouble, the academics or the businessmen?
I don't I won't take sides. I mean, we have to work on both sides. But that is a very good point, and that's a lot of academics have worried that they may lose their freedom. I argue strongly against that.
Presenter asks
3:22What is your lead role in your mind? Are you the leader of an academic institution, a chief executive, a fundraiser, or an ideas man?
Yes, I think it's the simplest way to answer that. Certainly all of those things to a certain extent.
Presenter asks
5:41Did you want to make music your career, or did you always know you wanted to be a scientist?
No, I didn't know anything. I knew what I enjoyed doing, and I never troubled myself about those things. I often think my life has unfolded in a rather random way. I don't plan things.
The keepsakes
Presenter asks
Why would people observing you at Melbourne University have thought you were lonely?
Well, because I went to university a year early, and so my year didn't go with me. And I was quite interested in in the university course. But I did have these passions for ice skating and music and making high five sets, and so I did not like sitting around and drinking coffee and talking all the time. So I was quite content to be on my own.
Presenter asks
12:42Can you explain scanning electron microscopes to me in more detail?
Unlike most microscopes, you don't put a sample in the microscope and shine light through it and peer at it through a lens. Here you form a tiny little beam of electrons that can be only a few atoms wide, and you scan this little beam across the sample as a spot scans across a television set. That's how a television image is formed. And the area you can scan might be a millionth of a metre, and then you display it on a screen a half a metre big, and so you magnify the image by perhaps half a million times by doing that.
Presenter asks
23:52When did you resolve the ambition to become Vice-Chancellor and get your hands on power?
Never. My life has always been one of sort of reversing up through organisations, as I say. ... I've become very interested in trying to solve this problem that I saw, which really started as a problem of the standing of technologists and engineers in Britain. And I couldn't understand this. ... That it was so low, and that people didn't understand. Didn't understand that the most exciting science in many ways takes place at the frontiers of technology.
“I often think my life has unfolded in a rather random way. I don't plan things.”
“I always say, uh, I can count the lifelong friends I've made on the seven forty seven on the fingers of no hand, you know, but on that boat one made a lot of friends.”
“My life has always been one of sort of reversing up through organisations, as I say.”