The radio goes on in the morning as our alarm clock, set to BBC Radio 4, so usually it’s the Today programme which brings the latest news and reports – domestic and foreign. We’ve listened to it for years and years, with all sorts of different presenters with their own particular style of presenting. It finishes at nine and there follows different half hour programmes on each weekday, which we mostly listen to, some with more concentration than others. A programme I usually do concentrate and listen to is The Life Scientific although I’m not very science minded. My dad was a scientist, and his brother my uncle was a very eminent scientist too. The Life Scientific is an interview by Jim Al-Khalili of famous and significant scientists of all ages, backgrounds, and experiences, talking about their lives and their story. Once to my surprise I recognised the interviewee as someone I went to school with from the age of about six, Professor Jane Clarke.
Today I didn’t know the scientist whose life was being explored, but he had such a pleasant voice it was difficult not to listen, and as he was also extremely interesting, it was compulsive:
We’re used to hearing the stories of scientists who study the world as it is now but what about the study of the past – what can this tell us about our future? Gideon Henderson’s research focuses on trying to understand climate change by looking at what was happening on our planet thousands of years ago.
His work has taken him all around the world – to the deepest oceans and the darkest caves – where he collects samples containing radioactive isotopes which he uses as “clocks” to date past ice ages and other major climate events. As a geochemist and Professor of Earth Sciences at the University of Oxford, his work deals with the biggest questions, like our impact on the carbon cycle and climate, the health of our oceans, and finding new ways to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
But in his role as Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, he also very much works on the present, at the intersection between the worlds of research and policy. He has overseen the decision to allow gene-edited food to be developed commercially in England and a UK surveillance programme to spot the Covid-19 virus in our waste-water. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001pmgn )
He was a fascinating person talking about a fascinating topic – not just about himself and his career, but his research on low-temperature geochemistry, the carbon cycle, the oceans, and on understanding the mechanisms driving climate change. (Wikipedia) My dad would have been so interested because he worked for a long time in low-temperature research, but he was a bio-chemist. I often think of my dad and wonder what he would have thought of progress and development in science, he would have been fascinated!
Lois Elsden 