The Royal Society and British Science: Episode 4

In Our Time

BBC

History

4.6 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2010

⏱️ 42 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society. The horrors of the First World War were a shocking indictment of the power of science. Picking up the thread at this hiatus in scientific optimism, this programme, recorded in the current home of the Royal Society in Carlton House Terrace in London, looks at the more subtle, discreet role the Society played in the 20th century, such as secretly arranging for refugee scientists to flee Germany, co-ordinating international scientific missions during the Cold War and quietly distributing government grant money to fund the brightest young researchers in the land. As ever more important scientific issues face the world and Britain today, the programme asks how well placed the Royal Society is to take an important lead in the future.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the in our time podcast for more details about in our time and for our terms of use
0:05.4	Please go to bbc.co.uk forward slash radio for I hope you enjoy the program
0:12.4	Well, my name is Lucy Crampe and I'm a chemist from the University of Bristol
0:16.0	What we do is that we look at ancient molecules that we find either an archaeological artifacts or we find say for example in ancient sediments
0:23.2	And we use these to reconstruct past climates and changes in in temperature going back millions of years
0:29.3	Climate change is something that's really relevant at the moment for obvious reasons and what we can do is we can identify
0:34.8	Past events say increases in carbon dioxide and that's the state of global warming in the past from modelling
0:40.3	What's happening in the past we can start to understand better what might be happening in the future
0:44.4	Well, I'm here in Carlton House Terrace
0:48.0	Which are some of the grandest houses in London quite extraordinary to think that
0:52.5	Ordinary mortals lived in these palaces. They're back onto the mall
0:56.5	Which of course goes up to Buckingham Palace. They have great terraces
0:59.7	And one of these is now the headquarters of the Royal Society
1:03.9	Since its beginning in the Royal Society showed off its wares to the public and nowadays over the last 20 years or so
1:10.2	They have a sort of farmers market. That's the best way I can describe it
1:14.3	30 or 40 groups of scientists from all over the United Kingdom come along here and show what they're doing
1:22.5	My name is Mohammed Keskar. I'm a consultant breath specialist at the Royal Free Hospital and
1:30.5	the title of our project
1:33.8	An exhibition for this year at the Royal Society is
1:38.6	Chasing cancer with a flash of light
1:41.6	We are about to start using light to actually treat rescues
1:46.8	So without a need for making any cut in the breast
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -5561 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.