Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Nobel Prize-winning chemist who discovered buckminsterfullerene, a third form of carbon.
On the island
Eight records
I like this because it's the piano version and when we got a piano for the kids, some friend had the music score for pictures from an exhibition and I saw that the first major chord as you come into it I couldn't even get my hand rounded so I thought I'll give this up but it's also beautiful because it links one of my great delights to go to cities and go to small art galleries.
This takes me back to Sheffield when a friend of mine taught me to play three chords on a guitar. But Hamish is a beautiful piece of music with a dulcimer and an altar harp, and it's also Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. So this shows you that I can play this on a guitar or on a dulcimer, and I love it because of that.
Symphony No. 4 in G majorFavourite
Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Karel Ančerl
The third record is really my all-time favourite symphony. It's Mahler's Fourth Symphony. My mother took me back to Berlin in'61 when I was twenty-one, and I hadn't been there, and it was a fantastic experience. In those days the wall wasn't up, and I went into the Eastern sector and bought six records in the Czech culture pavilion, one of which was Mahler's Fourth Symphony.
It also links me to my joy of space and the fact I think that Journey of the Sorceress is something to do with our journey from stars to where we are. Because we are sourcers, we've learned so much about how the universe works. And this epitomises for me why we're here and how we got here.
I'm also a great fan of Vin Vendors and the movie Paris, Texas. And I love also the music, which is very much about that drive from Houston to Dallas and back again during that period when we weren't quite sure what it was.
I often go to California. My wife and I spend about three weeks there every year. We often drive up the Pacific Coast Highway and switch the radio on there and every time this fantastic track by Kansas comes out, Dust in the Wind, not only speaker music but also the sum of the words, you know that your money will not another minute buy. It's very much the way I feel in a way that many scientists feel.
May 7th is again, I suppose. It's Jefferson Airplane, and I love this piece of music. It epitomizes San Francisco and when Marg and I go up to the Napa Valley to have a drink of wine and this, that, the other. And I like it because it's one of the nicest places around.
Yeah, that's why uh my last record is uh by John Lennon, and it's imagine I'm sure many people feel like I do uh that if we could get a w rid of things like our worries about heaven and hell, which is part of religious mythology, and national boundaries, these sorts of things, I think the world would be a better place.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:00Would you in many ways have preferred to have been some kind of artist?
Well, I I wouldn't say prefer. I feel deep down that I would have been better at art than I am at science.
Presenter asks
6:18What did winning [the Nobel Prize] mean to you?
It's it's very difficult. I used to believe that uh people who won the W Nobel Prize were the smartest kids on the block and they must be geniuses and this, that and the other, and I I know I'm not a genius. So that it changed my attitude as much as anything else.
Presenter asks
7:08Did you hover over the No then [when offered a knighthood]?
Well, you know, being a somewhat of a Republican, it's it shows the how thin the veneer of republicanism in me actually is. I didn't hover too long over that, but I had to check the postmark to see it wasn't one of my friends pulling a fast one because I mean it was just I just sat on the bottom and said this must be a joke.
Presenter asks
The keepsakes
The book
QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter
Richard P. Feynman
That would take me on to a deeper understanding of particle physics. I'm something like Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics, where I really have to learn some new mathematics to do that.
The luxury
A complete airbrush and computer graphics set
My luxury would have to be a complete airbrush and computer graphics set so that I could really try to experiment in pushing art into the next sort of technical regime, to do things with computer graphics that have never been done before.
What did you learn [working in your father's balloon factory]?
I learned everything about colors and die stuffs and grinding colors. I did the stock taking, so I did them without scales and with weights, without the computer help. And I never want to see another balloon as long as I live. But in fact, it was a tremendous training.
Presenter asks
10:25How did you fit in at school in Bolton [with a foreign name]?
Funny name, doesn't it? Well I had this funny name. I mean, you know, yes, in a s in a class of Higginbottom, Ramsbottom, Thistlethwaite, Entwistle, Smith-Jones and Crotasheener. ... My father cut it in half because people couldn't say it properly, or something like this. So it now looks Japanese name, but it's actually comes from an area which is now in Poland.
Presenter asks
28:14How does that analogy [of learning the language of Shakespeare] apply to science?
Well, it applies in a similar way that you have to learn the language of science, which would be symbolism, and spend some significant p part of your life trying to appreciate it and do it even.
“I think most chemists have to be able to visualize things in three dimensions, and they are visual people.”
“I think 99% of all British engineers were brought up in McConnell. And then LEGO came along, which doesn't teach you that. It's beautiful and seductive. But it's not something that you can make something that works in the factory. And I think you could plot the demise of British engineering and it parallels the reduction of McCarneau.”
“I think when I discovered that, that I was basically an alien, was wonderful.”
“I have three religions. One is atheism, the second one is amnesty internationalism, and the third one is humanism. I think if you had these three, you end up, I think, being a reasonable person.”