The Life Scientific

When she started her career, physicist Dame Athene Donald took a decision that shocked her colleagues. She wanted to apply the strict rules of physics to the messy, complicated world of biology. Since then, she has taken the field of biological physics out of an unfashionable rut in the 1980s, and helped to turn into one of the most exciting and promising areas in science today. As Professor of Experimental Physics at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge University, she studies the microscopic structure of everyday stuff, from plants to plastics. Jim Al-Khalili talks to Athene about her life and her passionate campaign to get more women working in science. Producer: Michelle Martin

Will we ever be able to escape the diseases of old age?That's the aim of today's guest, Prof Dame Linda Partridge who studies the genetics of ageing. From fruit flies to nematode worms, she uses simple organisms to unmask the secret processes that cause our bodies to deteriorate as we get older.But her route into science was far from normal - growing up in a Catholic convent boarding school, the girls were encouraged to be good housewives rather than diligent scientists. However, the lack of science facilities and teachers meant that the students had to run their own laboratory, ordering chemicals and tending to equipment.It was the start of a long and successful career, which has culminated in Linda becoming the Founding Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany and the Institute of Healthy Ageing at University College, London.Her life's goal is to produce pharmacological treatments that will help people stay healthier in old age. But what are the social and economic impacts of our growing longevity?Producer: Michelle Martin.

As a scientist, John Krebs made his name discovering that the brains of birds that store seeds are different from those that don't. But he gave up his successful research career and job as Professor of Zoology at Oxford University to move into science policy and management. After five years as Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council, John Krebs became the first Chairman of the Food Standards Agency, where he was embroiled in controversial questions such as is organic food better for us and how can the spread of foot and mouth disease be stopped.Lord Krebs is now Master of Jesus College, Oxford, but is still involved in issues where science meets public policy, in particular the debate over whether culling badgers will prevent cattle contracting TB.He talks to Jim al-Khalili about his life in science and in the public eye and about how he brings a scientific approach to every issue.

Geologist Sanjeev Gupta talks to Jim Al-Khalili about his love of exploring exotic terrains, from the foothills of the Himalaya to the red deserts of Mars. His research has taken him across the earth and now into space, working as a Long Term Planner on NASA's current Mars Curiosity Mission.But Sanjeev Gupta's big discovery lay at the bottom of the English Channel. Unearthing a 'wacky' theory from the 1980s, Sanjeev set out to prove that a series of megafloods caused Britain to separate from continental Europe and become an island.Producer: Michelle Martin.

Professor Dame Nancy Rothwell is not only one of the UK's leading brain scientists and physiologists; for the last three years Nancy Rothwell has also run the country's largest university - as President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Manchester. When Nancy Rothwell is not making decisions about the university's �800 million annual budget and 50,000 students and staff, she oversees a laboratory of researchers developing and trialling an experimental treatment to prevent death and disability caused by stroke. Given that someone in the UK will have a stroke every five minutes, that adds up to a lot of people who might end up benefitting from Nancy Rothwell's life in science.Nancy did not start her career working on the brain. As a young scientist, in 1970s, she made her reputation with original and high profile research into the causes of obesity, and the role of a tissue type known as brown fat. But in the early 1990s, a shock finding from an experiment stopped her in her tracks. It revealed something new and profound about the brain - a classic case of serendipity in science and a result that redirected Nancy Rothwell's research into the new and challenging field of neuroscience.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to the former technical director of British Nuclear Fuels, Dame Sue Ion, about a lifetime of working in the nuclear industry. When Sue got her first job at a nuclear fuel fabrication plant in Preston, nuclear power was generally seen as force for good but, during the dark decades post Chernobyl, it was a hard sell. Still, Sue continued to push for investment and innovation in the industry and in 2006 persuaded Tony Blair to change his mind about nuclear power, insisting that if Britain is to have any chance at all of keeping the lights on and cutting its carbon emissions, we will need to invest heavily not only in renewables like offshore wind but also in a new generation of nuclear power stations.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to Professor Alan Watson from the University of Leeds who has spent 40 years trying to unravel a mystery at the frontier of physics. Where do cosmic rays, subatomic particles with the highest known energies in the entire Universe, come from? And which violent astronomical events are producing these hugely energetic jets of particles that travel for light years to reach us? As many as a million of them pass through us every night as we sleep, the equivalent of having 2 chest x rays every year. His quest to find the origins of cosmic rays has taken him from the North York Moors to the South Pole and the pampas grasslands of Argentina where he has been instrumental in creating the largest ever Cosmic ray detector, covering an area bigger than Luxembourg.

Jim Al-Khalili talks to breast cancer pioneer, Professor Valerie Beral director of the cancer epidemiology unit in Oxford about her Million Women study and why she thinks a so-called 'vaccine' should be developed to prevent breast cancer. Jim finds out why the brilliant mathematician who became female Australia junior chess champion as a teenager and who got a first class degree in medicine decided she was unhappy with the uncertainties of diagnosis as a doctor, and turned her back on clinical medicine in the quest for answers to the bigger questions about public health. She talks about pioneering research into the causes of cancer, effects of the contraceptive pill, radiation from Chernobyl and Hiroshima. Most recently as lead investigator on the million women study she has looked at the risks and health effects from taking HRT. She has said that it is a 'crime' that more research hasn't been done on what is known about women who don't get breast cancer to prevent breast cancer in other women.

Robots probably won't take over the world, but they probably will be given ever greater responsibility. Already, robots care for the elderly in Japan, and drones have dropped bombs on Afghanistan. Professor Noel Sharkey fell in love with artificial intelligence in the 1980s, celebrated when he programmed his first robot to move in a straight line down the corridor and , for many years, judged robot wars on TV. Now, he thinks AI is a dangerous dream. Jim al-Khalili hears how Noel left school at 15 to become an electrician's apprentice and amateur rock musician before graduating as a Doctor of Psychology and world authority on robots, studying both their strengths and their limitations.

Annette Karmiloff-Smith, from the Birkbeck Centre for Brain & Cognitive Development in London talks to Jim Al-Khalili about her Life Scientific. Starting out as a simultaneous interpreter for the United Nations she soon decided that not being allowed to express any thoughts of her own wasn't for her. After a chance encounter with Jean Piaget, one of the most renowned psychologists of all time, she decided to pursue psychology and over forty years later she is a world expert in brain development and how babies and children learn. Her research has been cited not just by fellow psychologists, but by philosophers, linguists, educationalists, geneticists and neuroscientists. Her controversial response to guidance issued by the American Academy of Paediatrics, that parents should discourage TV viewing in children under 2, is that if the subject matter is chosen well, and is scientifically based, a TV screen can be better for a baby than a book.