Optical communications pioneer Polina Bayvel

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 11 February 2020

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We’ve come to expect to be connected instantly to anywhere in the world and to have unlimited information at our fingertips. We shop online, stream music, download books and boxsets onto our electronic devices. We share videos of our pets just because we can. But how much time have you spent recently thinking about the remarkable feats of engineering that make all this possible? Polina Bayvel has been at the forefront of creating the optical fibre networks that are capable of transporting vast quantities of data from one place to another: linking continents via cables laid under oceans or enabling computer systems in data centres to share information. Without these high speed networks, ultra-fast high-capacity broadband will remain a dream. Polina tells Jim Al Khalili how she moved to the UK from the Soviet Union when she was 12 and worked in industry for many years, before deciding that she wanted to set up a lab to find out what optical fibres were capable of: just how much data could they transport, and how fast? Producer: Anna Buckley

Transcript

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0:18.0	making people's days a bit better, helping them process, all manner of things.
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0:24.4	subjective and everyone has different tastes so we've got a huge range of comedy on offer
0:29.6	from satire to silly shocking to soothing profound to just general pratting about. So if you
0:36.2	fancy a laugh, find your next comedy at BBC Sounds.
0:40.0	Welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.
0:43.0	BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts.
0:48.0	Hello. Today I want to make you all feel a little bit more grateful.
0:52.0	We've come to expect to be connected
0:55.1	instantly to anywhere in the world to have unlimited information at our fingertips
0:59.6	to shop online, stream music, download books and box sets onto our electronic devices
1:05.6	to share videos of our pets, just well, because we can.
1:10.3	But how much time have you spent thinking about the remarkable feats of engineering that have made all this possible?
1:16.0	My guest today has been, and still is, at the forefront of creating the infrastructure that makes our interconnected world possible.
1:24.6	In 1994 she set up one of the first university laboratories in the world dedicated to the
1:29.4	study of optical communication systems.
1:32.4	When most people didn't know what the internet was,
1:35.0	Polina Beaville was in her lab at University College London,
	...

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