Dame Pratibha Gai on training atoms to do what we want

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2025

⏱️ 29 minutes

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Summary

Chemical reactions are the backbone of modern society: the energy we use, the medicines we take, our housing materials, even the foods we eat, are created by reacting different substances together. If we zoom in, it’s the atoms within these substances that rearrange themselves to give rise to new substances with the properties we need.

However, chemical reactions are far from perfect. They're often inefficient and their waste products can be harmful to the environment. Getting to grips with what goes on at the scale of individual atoms has long been a sticking point.

Dame Pratibha Gai has spent much of her career pioneering novel microscopes to bring this seemingly inaccessible atomic world into sharp focus. Now Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at York University, her microscope, known as the environmental transmission electron microscope, is housed in labs around the world. It allows scientists, like herself, to observe chemical reactions in real-time, in exquisite atomic detail, and tinker with them to create products that are not only better for all of us, but also the environment.

Presented by Jim Al-Khalili Produced by Beth Eastwood A BBC Studios Audio production for Radio 4

Transcript

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0:52.1	Hello, while we probably don't give it much thought, chemical reactions are taking
0:57.1	place everywhere in the world all the time. In fact, they're the backbone of modern society.
1:02.9	The energy we use, the medicines we take, the foods we eat, our housing materials are all
1:09.0	created by reacting different substances together. And if we could
1:13.1	zoom in, we'd find that it's the atoms within these substances that are rearranging themselves
1:18.5	to give rise to new substances with the properties we need. But chemical reactions are far from perfect.
1:24.3	They're often inefficient and their weight products can be harmful to the environment. Understanding them down to the atomic scale has been a sticking point for chemists,
1:33.4	perhaps not surprising given just how small atoms are. Enter the young scientist Pratiba Guy.
	...

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