Chris Jackson on sustainable geology
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 12 January 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Chris Jackson is the kind of scientist who just loves to get out into the landscape he loves. He’s often introduced as ‘geologist and adventurer’. For the past five years he’s been Professor of Basin Analysis in the Department of Earth Sciences and Engineering at Imperial College London and he’s now about to move back to the University of Manchester, where he studied as a student, to become Professor of Sustainable Geoscience.
As a child growing up in Derby, Chris learned to love the outdoors on family trips to the Peak District. Recently, you may have seen him abseiling into a crater of an active volcano in the Democratic Republic of Congo for a BBC TV series. He’s also been telling us about the link between our planet’s geology and climate change as part of the recent Royal Institution Christmas lectures.
Chris talks to Jim al-Khalili about working in the oil and gas exploration industry at the start of his career, searching for massive deposits of salt deep inside the earth and his experience of being a black geologist.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Before you listen to this BBC podcast I'd like to introduce myself. My name's |
| 0:04.0 | Stevie Middleton and I'm a BBC Commissioner for a load of sport |
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| 0:31.5 | So if you like this podcast, head over to BBC Sounds where you'll find plenty more. |
| 0:35.2 | Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific. |
| 0:39.2 | I'm Jim Alkulele and I'm on a mission to interview as many of our leading scientists as I can. |
| 0:45.4 | Chris Jackson is the kind of scientist who's passionate about the outdoors, immersing himself |
| 0:51.0 | in the landscape he loves so much. |
| 0:53.0 | He's often introduced as a geologist and adventurer. |
| 0:57.0 | For the past five years, he's been professor of basin analysis, |
| 1:01.0 | no, nothing to do with plumbing, in the Department of Earth Sciences and |
| 1:04.8 | engineering at Imperial College London. As a child growing up in Derby, Chris learned |
| 1:10.1 | to love the outdoors on the regular family holidays spent in the Peak District. |
| 1:14.6 | Later his PhD research took him further afield to locations like the Sinai Desert in Egypt. |
| 1:20.6 | Recently you may have seen him absailing into a crater of an active volcano in the Democratic |
| 1:26.7 | Republic of Congo for a BBC TV series. |
... |
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