Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss an atomic particle that's become inseparable from modernity. JJ Thomson discovered the electron 125 years ago, so revealing that atoms, supposedly the smallest things, were made of even smaller things. He pictured them inside an atomic ball like a plum pudding, with others later identifying their place outside the nucleus - and it is their location on the outer limit that has helped scientists learn so much about electrons and with electrons.  We can use electrons to reveal the secrets of other particles and, while electricity exists whether we understand electrons or not, the applications of electricity and electrons grow as our knowledge grows. Many questions, though, remain unanswered. With  Victoria Martin
Professor of Collider Physics at the University of Edinburgh Harry Cliff
Research Fellow in Particle Physics at the University of Cambridge And Frank Close
Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson

The Electron

Scientific principles, theory, and the role of key figures in the advancement of science.

History

Society & Culture

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) and his role in the development of electrical systems towards the end of the nineteenth century.  He made his name in New York in the contest over which current should flow into homes and factories in America.  Some such as Edison backed direct current or DC while others such as Westinghouse backed alternating current or AC and Nikola Tesla’s invention of a motor that worked on AC swung it for the alternating system that went on to power the modern age.  He ensured his reputation and ideas burnt brightly for the next decades, making him synonymous with the lone, genius inventor of the new science fiction.   With  Simon Schaffer
Emeritus Fellow of Darwin College, University of Cambridge Jill Jonnes
Historian and author of “Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse and the Race to Electrify the World” And  Iwan Morus
Professor of History at Aberystwyth University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list:  W. Bernard Carlson, Tesla: Inventor of the Electrical Age (Princeton University Press, 2013) Margaret Cheney and Robert Uth, Tesla: Master of Lightning (Barnes & Noble Books, 1999)  Thomas P. Hughes, Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society, 1880-1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983) Carolyn Marvin, When Old Technologies Were New (Open University Press, 1988) Iwan Rhys Morus, Nikola Tesla and the Electrical Future (Icon Books, 2019) Iwan Rhys Morus, How The Victorians Took Us To The Moon (Icon, 2022) David E. Nye, Electrifying America: Social Meanings of a New Technology (MIT Press, 1991) John J. O’Neill, Prodigal Genius: The Life of Nikola Tesla (first published 1944; Cosimo Classics, 2006) Marc J. Seifer, Wizard: The Life and Times of Nikola Tesla, Biography of a Genius (first published 1996; Citadel Press, 2016) Nikola Tesla, My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla (first published 1919; Martino Fine Books, 2011) Nikola Tesla, My Inventions and other Writings (Penguin, 2012) In Our Time is a BBC Studios Audio production

Nikola Tesla

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German physicist who, at the age of 23 and while still a student, effectively created quantum mechanics for which he later won the Nobel Prize.  Werner Heisenberg made this breakthrough in a paper in 1925 when, rather than starting with an idea of where atomic particles were at any one time, he worked backwards from what he observed of atoms and their particles and the light they emitted, doing away with the idea of their continuous orbit of the nucleus and replacing this with equations. This was momentous and from this flowed what’s known as his Uncertainty Principle, the idea that, for example, you can accurately measure the position of an atomic particle or its momentum, but not both. With  Fay Dowker
Professor of Theoretical Physics at Imperial College London Harry Cliff
Research Fellow in Particle Physics at the University of Cambridge And  Frank Close
Professor Emeritus of Theoretical Physics and Fellow Emeritus at Exeter College at the University of Oxford Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list: Philip Ball, Beyond Weird: Why Everything You Thought You Knew about Quantum Physics Is Different (Vintage, 2018) John Bell, ‘Against 'measurement'’ (Physics World, Vol 3, No 8, 1990) Mara Beller, Quantum Dialogue: The Making of a Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2001) David C. Cassidy, Beyond Uncertainty: Heisenberg, Quantum Physics, And The Bomb (Bellevue Literary Press, 2010)  Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (first published 1958; Penguin Classics, 2000) Carlo Rovelli, Helgoland: The Strange and Beautiful Story of Quantum Physics (Penguin, 2022)

Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the chemical signals coursing through our bodies throughout our lives, produced in separate areas and spreading via the bloodstream.  We call these 'hormones' and we produce more than 80 of them of which the best known are arguably oestrogen, testosterone, adrenalin, insulin and cortisol. On the whole hormones operate without us being immediately conscious of them as their goal is homeostasis, maintaining the levels of everything in the body as required without us having to think about them first.  Their actions are vital for our health and wellbeing and influence many different aspects of the way our bodies work. With Sadaf Farooqi
Professor of Metabolism and Medicine at the University of Cambridge Rebecca Reynolds
Professor of Metabolic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh And Andrew Bicknell
Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Reading Produced by Victoria Brignell Reading list: Rachel Carson, Silent Spring (first published 1962; Penguin Classics, 2000) Stephen Nussey and Saffron Whitehead, Endocrinology: An Integrated Approach (BIOS Scientific Publishers; 2001) Aylinr Y. Yilmaz, Comprehensive Introduction to Endocrinology for Novices (Independently published, 2023)

Hormones

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the tiny drifting organisms in the oceans that sustain the food chain for all the lifeforms in the water and so for the billions of people who, in turn, depend on the seas for their diet.  In Earth's development, the plant-like ones among them, the phytoplankton, produced so much oxygen through photosynthesis that around half the oxygen we breathe today originated there. And each day as the sun rises, the animal ones, the zooplankton, sink to the depths of the seas to avoid predators in such density that they appear on ship sonars like a new seabed, only to rise again at night in the largest migration of life on this planet. With Carol Robinson
Professor of Marine Sciences at the University of East Anglia Abigail McQuatters-Gollop
Associate Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Plymouth And Christopher Lowe
Lecturer in Marine Biology at Swansea University Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list:  Juli Berwald, Spineless: The Science of Jellyfish and the Art of Growing a Backbone (Riverhead Books, 2018) Sir Alister Hardy, The Open Sea: The World of Plankton (first published 1959; Collins New Naturalist Library, 2009)  Richard Kirby, Ocean Drifters: A Secret World Beneath the Waves (Studio Cactus Ltd, 2010) Robert Kunzig, Mapping the Deep: The Extraordinary Story of Ocean Science (Sort Of Books, 2000) Christian Sardet, Plankton: Wonders of the Drifting World (University of Chicago Press, 2015)  Helen Scales, The Brilliant Abyss: True Tales of Exploring the Deep Sea, Discovering Hidden Life and Selling the Seabed (Bloomsbury Sigma, 2022)

Plankton

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the man who, in 1905, produced several papers that were to change the world of physics and whose name went on to become a byword for genius. This was Albert Einstein, then still a technical expert at a Swiss patent office, and that year of 1905 became known as his annus mirabilis ('miraculous year').  While Einstein came from outside the academic world, some such as Max Planck championed his theory of special relativity, his principle of mass-energy equivalence that followed, and his explanations of Brownian Motion and the photoelectric effect.  Yet it was not until 1919, when a solar eclipse proved his theory that gravity would bend light, that Einstein became an international celebrity and developed into an almost mythical figure. With  Richard Staley
Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge and Professor in History of Science at the University of Copenhagen Diana Kormos Buchwald
Robert M. Abbey Professor of History and Director and General Editor of The Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology And John Heilbron 
Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley Producer: Simon Tillotson Reading list:  Ronald W. Clark, Einstein: The Life and Times (first published 1971; HarperPaperbacks, 2011) Albert Einstein (eds. Jurgen Renn and Hanoch Gutfreund), Relativity: The Special and the General Theory - 100th Anniversary Edition (Princeton University Press, 2019) Albert Einstein, Out of My Later Years (first published 1950; Citadel Press, 1974) Albert Einstein (ed. Paul A. Schilpp), Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist: The Library of Living Philosophers Volume VII (first published 1949; Open Court, 1970) Albert Einstein (eds. Otto Nathan and Heinz Norden), Einstein on Peace (first published 1981; Literary Licensing, 2011) Albrecht Folsing, Albert Einstein: A Biography (Viking, 1997) J. L. Heilbron, Niels Bohr: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2020) Walter Isaacson, Einstein: His Life and Universe (Simon & Schuster, 2008) Max Jammer, Einstein and Religion (Princeton University Press, 2002) Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Einstein (Cambridge University Press, 2014) Dennis Overbye, Einstein in Love: A Scientific Romance (Viking, 2000) Abraham Pais, Subtle Is the Lord: The Science and the Life of Albert Einstein (Oxford University Press, 1982) David E. Rowe and Robert Schulmann (eds.), Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb (Princeton University Press, 2007) Matthew Stanley, Einstein's War: How Relativity Triumphed Amid the Vicious Nationalism of World War I (Dutton, 2019) Fritz Stern, Einstein’s German World (Princeton University Press, 1999) A. Douglas Stone, Einstein and the Quantum: The Quest of the Valiant Swabian (Princeton University Press, 2013) Milena Wazeck (trans. Geoffrey S. Koby), Einstein's Opponents: The Public Controversy About the Theory of Relativity in the 1920s (Cambridge University Press, 2014)

The Electron

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