Hello I'm Krestey Young and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 1992, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My castaway this week is a scientist, the fact that his father was a chemist and his mother a bacteriologist

doesn't mean he says that a talent for science was in his genes. More likely he was inspired

by a good school teacher.

It's a theory he can support better than most because genetics is his field.

He's made a lifelong study of the evolution of the snail, the reproduction of the fruit fly, and the sex life of the slug.

Eminent in his field now as head of genetics at University College London,

he was invited a few months ago to give the wreath lectures,

during which he confounded all theories of racial purity,

told us most of the world was descended from 10 Africans,

and warned that like mankind today, the dinosaur once believed himself to dominate the world. He is Dr.

Steve Jones. Let's deal with your genes first Steve. Surely you inherited an

aptitude for science from your parents even if they both proved themselves to be talented at the thing?

I suppose I did but I'm going to arguably I also inherited an aptitude for playing the piano but I never learned to play the piano.

So I think a great deal depends on one's environment as much as one's genes and I genuinely

think it's usually impossible to separate the two effects.

But you don't deny, do you you that we inherit physical characteristics like wide hips or big noses or red hair?

I think I'll give you red hair.

What, we don't inherit the others?

A thing you don't often hear scientists say in public, although we say only

take in private all the time, is I've got no idea and the answer is to those particular

...