In Our Time: Science

Latest Episodes:

Corals Oct 28, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the simple animals which informed Charles Darwin's first book, The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs, published in 1842. From corals, Darwin concluded that the Earth changed very slowly and was not fashioned by God. Now coral reefs, which some liken to undersea rainforests, are threatened by human activity, including fishing, pollution and climate change.

With

Steve Jones Senior Research Fellow in Genetics at University College London

Nicola Foster Lecturer in Marine Biology at the University of Plymouth

And

Gareth Williams Associate Professor in Marine Biology at Bangor University School of Ocean Sciences

Producer Simon Tilllotson.

The Manhattan Project Oct 07, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the race to build an atom bomb in the USA during World War Two. Before the war, scientists in Germany had discovered the potential of nuclear fission and scientists in Britain soon argued that this could be used to make an atom bomb, against which there could be no defence other than to own one. The fear among the Allies was that, with its head start, Germany might develop the bomb first and, unmatched, use it on its enemies. The USA took up the challenge in a huge engineering project led by General Groves and Robert Oppenheimer and, once the first bomb had been exploded at Los Alamos in July 1945, it appeared inevitable that the next ones would be used against Japan with devastating results.

The image above is of Robert Oppenheimer and General Groves examining the remains of one the bases of the steel test tower, at the atomic bomb Trinity Test site, in September 1945.

With

Bruce Cameron Reed The Charles A. Dana Professor of Physics Emeritus at Alma College, Michigan

Cynthia Kelly Founder and President of the Atomic Heritage Foundation

And

Frank Close Emeritus Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Exeter College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

The Evolution of Crocodiles Sep 16, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable diversity of the animals that dominated life on land in the Triassic, before the rise of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic, and whose descendants are often described wrongly as 'living fossils'. For tens of millions of years, the ancestors of alligators and Nile crocodiles included some as large as a bus, some running on two legs like a T Rex and some that lived like whales. They survived and rebounded from a series of extinction events but, while the range of habitats of the dinosaur descendants such as birds covers much of the globe, those of the crocodiles have contracted, even if the animals themselves continue to evolve today as quickly as they ever have.

With

Anjali Goswami Research Leader in Life Sciences and Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum

Philip Mannion Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London

And

Steve Brusatte Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh

Producer Simon Tillotson

Longitude May 13, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the search for Longitude while at sea. Following efforts by other maritime nations, the British Government passed the Longitude Act in 1714 to reward anyone who devised reliable means for ships to determine their longitude at sea. Mariners could already calculate how far they were north or south, the Latitude, using the Pole Star, but voyaging across the Atlantic to the Caribbean was much less predictable as navigators could not be sure how far east or west they were, a particular problem when heading for islands. It took fifty years of individual genius and collaboration in Britain and across Europe, among astronomers, clock makers, mathematicians and sailors, for the problem to be resolved.

With

Rebekah Higgitt Principal Curator of Science at National Museums Scotland

Jim Bennett Keeper Emeritus at the Science Museum

And

Simon Schaffer Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Pierre-Simon Laplace Apr 08, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Laplace (1749-1827) who was a giant in the world of mathematics both before and after the French Revolution. He addressed one of the great questions of his age, raised but side-stepped by Newton: was the Solar System stable, or would the planets crash into the Sun, as it appeared Jupiter might, or even spin away like Saturn threatened to do? He advanced ideas on probability, long the preserve of card players, and expanded them out across science; he hypothesised why the planets rotate in the same direction; and he asked if the Universe was deterministic, so that if you knew everything about all the particles then you could predict the future. He also devised the metric system and reputedly came up with the name 'metre'. With

Marcus du Sautoy Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford

Timothy Gowers Professor of Mathematics at the College de France

And

Colva Roney-Dougal Professor of Pure Mathematics at the University of St Andrews

Producer: Simon Tillotson

The Late Devonian Extinction Mar 11, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the devastating mass extinctions of the Late Devonian Period, roughly 370 million years ago, when around 70 percent of species disappeared. Scientists are still trying to establish exactly what happened, when and why, but this was not as sudden as when an asteroid hits Earth. The Devonian Period had seen the first trees and soils and it had such a diversity of sea life that it’s known as the Age of Fishes, some of them massive and armoured, and, in one of the iconic stages in evolution, some of them moving onto land for the first time. One of the most important theories for the first stage of this extinction is that the new soils washed into oceans, leading to algal blooms that left the waters without oxygen and suffocated the marine life.

The image above is an abstract group of the huge, armoured Dunkleosteus fish, lost in the Late Devonian Extinction

With

Jessica Whiteside Associate Professor of Geochemistry in the Department of Ocean and Earth Science at the University of Southampton

David Bond Professor of Geology at the University of Hull

And

Mike Benton Professor of Vertebrate Paleontology at the School of Life Sciences, University of Bristol.

Emilie du Châtelet Feb 04, 2021

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the outstanding French mathematicians and natural philosophers of the 18th Century, celebrated across Europe. Emilie du Châtelet, 1706-49, created a translation of Newton’s Principia from Latin into French that helped spread the light of mathematics on the emerging science, and her own book Institutions de Physique, with its lessons on physics, was welcomed as profound. She had the privileges of wealth and aristocracy, yet had to fight to be taken seriously as an intellectual in a world of ideas that was almost exclusively male. With

Patricia Fara Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge

David Wootton Anniversary Professor of History at the University of York

And

Judith Zinsser Professor Emerita of History at Miami University of Ohio and biographer of Emilie du Châtelet.

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Eclipses Dec 31, 2020

Show notes

To celebrate Melvyn Bragg’s 27 years presenting In Our Time, five well-known fans of the programme have chosen their favourite episodes. Guy Garvey, lyricist and lead singer of the band Elbow, has selected the episode on eclipses, first broadcast in December 2020. Solar eclipses are some of life’s most extraordinary moments, when day becomes night and the stars come out before day returns either all too soon or not soon enough, depending on what you understand to be happening. In ancient China, for example, there was a story that a dragon was eating the sun and it had to be scared away by banging pots and pans if the sun were to return. Total lunar eclipses are more frequent and last longer, with a blood moon coloured red like a sunrise or sunset. Both events have created the chance for scientists to learn something remarkable, from the speed of light, to the width of the Atlantic, to the roundness of the Earth, to discovering helium and proving Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.

With

Carolin Crawford Public Astronomer based at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge and a fellow of Emmanuel College

Frank Close Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford

And

Lucie Green Professor of Physics and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London

Producers: Simon Tillotson and Julia Johnson

Spanning history, religion, culture, science and philosophy, In Our Time from BBC Radio 4 is essential listening for the intellectually curious. In each episode, host Melvyn Bragg and expert guests explore the people, ideas, events and discoveries that have shaped our world.

In Our Time is a BBC Studios production

Alan Turing Oct 15, 2020

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alan Turing (1912-1954) whose 1936 paper On Computable Numbers effectively founded computer science. Immediately recognised by his peers, his wider reputation has grown as our reliance on computers has grown. He was a leading figure at Bletchley Park in the Second World War, using his ideas for cracking enemy codes, work said to have shortened the war by two years and saved millions of lives. That vital work was still secret when Turing was convicted in 1952 for having a sexual relationship with another man for which he was given oestrogen for a year, or chemically castrated. Turing was to kill himself two years later. The immensity of his contribution to computing was recognised in the 1960s by the creation of the Turing Award, known as the Nobel of computer science, and he is to be the new face on the £50 note.

With

Leslie Ann Goldberg Professor of Computer Science and Fellow of St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford

Simon Schaffer Professor of the History of Science at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Darwin College

And

Andrew Hodges Biographer of Turing and Emeritus Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Paul Dirac Mar 05, 2020

Show notes

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the theoretical physicist Dirac (1902-1984), whose achievements far exceed his general fame. To his peers, he was ranked with Einstein and, when he moved to America in his retirement, he was welcomed as if he were Shakespeare. Born in Bristol, he trained as an engineer before developing theories in his twenties that changed the understanding of quantum mechanics, bringing him a Nobel Prize in 1933 which he shared with Erwin Schrödinger. He continued to make deep contributions, bringing abstract maths to physics, beyond predicting anti-particles as he did in his Dirac Equation.

With

Graham Farmelo Biographer of Dirac and Fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge

Valerie Gibson Professor of High Energy Physics at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Trinity College

And

David Berman Professor of Theoretical Physics at Queen Mary University of London

Producer: Simon Tillotson