The Life Scientific

Nicky Clayton is Professor of Comparative Cognition at Cambridge University. Her work challenges how we think of intelligence and she says that birds' brains developed independently from humans or apes. Members of the corvid family, such as crows and jays appear to plan for the future and predict other birds behaviour in her elegant experiments.One experiment she has designed was inspired by Aesop's fable of the hungry crow. Her work raises questions about the understanding of animal behaviour, including whether, as humans, we can ever interpret the actions of other species accurately. But she says her research with birds and other animals can help illuminate young children's activities and how their brains develop. Nicky Clayton is scientist in residence at the Rambert Dance Company and her latest collaboration with Mark Baldwin, the artistic director, is "Seven for a secret, never to be told" which takes concepts from childhood behaviour and reinterprets them choreographically. Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Jim al-Khalili talks to a scientist who grows human bones in a test tube, Molly Stevens. Molly Stevens does geeky hard core science but her main aim is to help people. Twenty years ago, nobody thought it was possible to make human body parts in the laboratory, but today scientists are trying to create almost every bit of the body. Professor Molly Stevens grows bones. Towards the end of her PHD, a chance encounter with the founding father of tissue engineering and an image of a little boy with chronic liver failure, convinced her that this was what she wanted to do. Ten years on, she runs a highly successful lab at Imperial College London and has been photographed by Vogue. Producer: Anna Buckley.

Colin Blakemore is a neuroscientist who nearly became an artist. He specialised in vision and the development of the brain, and pioneered the idea that the brain has the ability to change even in adulthood contrary to the popular view at the time.Professor Blakemore, the youngest ever Reith Lecturer, is an influential science communicator and is committed to raising the profile of brain research. Because of his work he was targeted by animal rights campaigners for over a decade, but rather than keeping a low profile as advised, he decided to work with the activists and explain his point of view about the need for animal testing in medical research. He was appointed head of the Medical Research Council in 2003 but threatened to resign shortly after when he was refused a knighthood, because of his defence of animal research. He has been equally outspoken on many issues including classification of drugs and GM foods. His current areas of research include how the brain develops which has implications for many conditions including autism and schizophrenia. He talks to Jim Al-Khalili about why he's not been afraid to stand up to his critics. Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

When Professor Sir Michael Marmot was a junior doctor he decided that medicine was failed prevention. To really understand disease you have to look at the society people live in. His major scientific discovery came from following the health of British civil servants over many years. The Whitehall studies, as they're known, challenged the myth about executive stress and instead revealed that, far from being 'tough at the top', it was in fact much tougher for those lower down the pecking order. This wasn't just a matter of rich or poor, or even social class. What Marmot showed was the lower your status at work, the shorter your lifespan. Mortality rates were three times higher for those at the bottom than for those at the top. The unpleasant truth is that your boss will live longer than you.What's more, this social gradient of health, or what he calls Status Syndrome, isn't confined to civil servants or to the UK but is a global phenomenon. In conversation with Jim Al-Khalili Michael Marmot reveals what inspires and motivates his work.Producer: Geraldine Fitzgerald.

Cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, discusses his journey in understanding the mind, moving from failed neuroscience experiments to influential writing on language and human nature. He argues that young children exhibit grammatical genius with their language mistakes. Pinker emphasizes the role of genetics over nurture in human behavior, sparking debates in the field. He also explores the paradox of self-esteem and violence, suggesting that high self-esteem may lead to aggression, highlighting complexities in societal behavior.

Their work is changing the world we live in, but what do we really know about their lives beyond the lab?Each week on The Life Scientific, Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at Surrey University, invites a leading scientist to tell us about their life and work. He wants to get under their skin and into their minds; to find out what first inspired them towards their field of research and what motivates them to keep going when the evidence seems to be stacking up against their theories. And he'll ask what their ideas and discoveries will do for us. He'll talk to Nobel laureates as well as the next generation of beautiful minds, finding out what inspired them to do science in the first place and what motivates them to keep going. The programme will also feature short drop-ins from fellow scientists. Some will comment on our guest's early career, the implications of their discoveries, or offer alternative perspectives. In this first programme, Jim talks to geneticist Paul Nurse, arguably the most powerful scientist in Britain today. Nurse's interest in science was sparked by the early days of the space race, when one night as a boy, he chased Sputnik down the road in his pyjamas, in a vain attempt to catch up with the Russian satellite as it passed overhead. Nurse, a Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society is now firmly part of the science establishment but his upbringing and early academic life was far from conventional. Brought up by working class parents, in North London, Nurse struggled at first to even get accepted by any University. According to one of his tutors (who we'll hear from in the programme) Nurse didn't exactly shine as an undergraduate, either. But these experiences taught him to be self reliant, determined and not afraid of failure.It was a attitude that paid off. In 2001, Nurse shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine for his research on how cells divide, a process which is not only fundamental to all living things but has major implications for understanding and treating diseases like cancer.His rise was, some say, meteoric. But it's not how he sees it, especially in the early days: " I did have a lot of trouble getting a proper job". Now President of one of the oldest and most respected scientific institutions in the world, Nurse's career has been far from predictable, and at times, controversial. Yet the same could be said for his personal life, when in his 50s, he was hit with a major revelation that would change forever how he viewed his past. Confirmed guests on future programmes include the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker; Astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; Epidemiologist Michael Marmot, neuroscientist Colin Blakemore and Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer whose work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs; Producers: Anna Buckley and Geraldine Fitzgerald.