Science Stories

In these ten absorbing series, award-winning authors Naomi Alderman and Philip Ball and guest presenters Tracey Logan, Kevin Fong, Simon Schaffer and Lindsey Fitzharris take a look at the many amazing events and characters from science's long history. In this collection, which runs close to 23 hours in total, they throw light on the revolutionary visionaries who defined how we see the world, from pioneers and prophets to inventors, experimenters and creators. Among the topics explored are feuding dinosaur hunters, jumping genes, the engine that nearly ran out of steam, the day the Earth stopped standing still, how laughing gas was discovered, the first female professional scientist in Britain, and how an eel sparked our interest in electricity. So, if you want to know more about a medieval bishop's Big Bang theory, how Florence Nightingale saved lives with statistics, the medieval equivalent of GPS, the woman who tamed lightning, Cyrano de Bergerac's designs for a spaceship, and what happened when Einstein decided to fix the fridge, our presenters are here to fill you in. Helping them discover the fact behind the fiction are a host of scientists and experts, including Professor Edith Hall, Hannah Fry, Tim Spector, Marcus du Sautoy, Richard Wiseman, Natalie Haynes and Tracy Chevalier. First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on the following dates: The Bone Wars 10 June 2015 The engine that ran out of steam 17 June 2015 DNA's Third Man 24 June 2015 How Perkin brought purple to the people 1 July 2015 Seeing is Believing - The Leviathan of Parsonstown 8 July 2015 Submarine for a Stuart King 6 January 2016 How an eel sparked our interest in electricity 13 January 2016 The meteorite and the hidden hoax 20 January 2016 The duchess who gatecrashed science 27 January 2016 Einstein's Fridge 3 February 2016 Florence Nightingale: Statistician 18 May 2016 Chaucer's Astrolabe - The Medieval GPS 25 May 2016 Paul Ehrlich's 'Magic Bullet' and the Cure for Syphilis 1 June 2016 Maxwell's Demon 8 June 2016 Blood Banks 15 June 2016 The Day The Earth Stopped Standing Still 30 November 2016 How Much Testosterone Makes You a Man 7 December 2016 The man who predicted deforestation and climate change 200 years ago 14 December 2016 The Woman Who Tamed Lightning 21 December 2016 Mesmerism 28 December 2016 Jumping Genes 4 January 2017 The Birth of Photography 11 January 2017 Pavlov and his Dogs 7 June 2017 The Medieval Bishop's Big Bang Theory 14 June 2017 The Man Who Found Physics in Shells, Seeds and Bees 28 June 2017 Caroline Herschel and the Comets 5 July 2017 A wolf, a goat and some cabbages 22 November 2017 The Wondrous Transformation of Caterpillars 29 November 2017 Lise Meitner: Humanitarian physicist who unlocked the science of the atom bomb 6 December 2017 How Humphry Davy discovered laughing gas 13 December 2017 Michael Faraday and his 'instructess' in chemistry 20 December 2017 17th-Century Space Flight: The Real Cyrano de Bergerac 13 June 2018 Urea and the Wohler Myth 20 June 2018 Descartes' Daughter 27 June 2018 Hypatia: The Murdered Mathematician 4 July 2018 Mary Anning and Fossil Hunting 11 July 2018 Eddington's Eclipse and Einstein's Celebrity 12 December 2018 Lucretius, Sheep and Atoms 19 December 2018 Kepler's Snowflakes 26 December 2018 Lady Mary Montagu's Smallpox Experiment 2 January 2019 Ibn al-Haytham and How We See 9 January 2019 Galileo's lost letter 13 August 2019 Madame Lavoisier's Translation of Oxygen 20 August 2019 Ignaz Semmelweiss: The Hand Washer 27 August 2019 Ramon Llull: the medieval prophet of computer science 3 September 2019 Alexis Carrel and the immortal chicken heart 10 September 2019 Mary Somerville, pioneer of popular science writing 11 December 2019 Sophia Jex-Blake, first woman doctor in Scotland 18 December 2019 Isaac Newton and the story of the apple 25 December 2019 © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd © 2023 BBC Studios Distribution Ltd