Geoff Palmer on brewing

The Life Scientific

BBC

Technology, Personal Journals, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 4 August 2015

⏱️ 28 minutes

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Summary

Jim al-Khalili talks to botanist Geoff Palmer, the UK's only professor of brewing and distilling, about revolutionising the malting industry and his unusual scientific career after arriving from Jamaica in 1955 as a 14 year old boy. When he went for an interview for an MSc in 1964 the representative from the Ministry of Agriculture suggested he go back home and grow bananas. Why? Because he didn't know the difference between wheat and barley. Undeterred he went on to become a world authority on barley, brewing and distilling and Scotland's first black professor. His research on how malt could be made more quickly saved the brewing industry millions. But he says, it's only through good luck and with the help of good Samaritans that his career took the course it did, helping him get to university and even to finish school. Now at the age of 75, he's still fighting to make education and a scientific career available to everyone, regardless of their background.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific, first broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
0:06.2	I'm Jim Alleili and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important scientists
0:11.6	alive today and to find out what makes them tick.
0:15.0	If my guest today had been just one month older
0:20.0	when he arrived in London as a teenager from Jamaica in 1955, he almost certainly wouldn't
0:25.6	be the world-renowned professor of brewing and distilling that he is today.
0:30.3	Jeff Palmer's research has earned him the brewing equivalent of a Nobel Prize.
0:34.4	He's one of only four people ever to receive it and the first ever European.
0:38.4	He says he became obsessed with finding out how different grains work and his discoveries about barley and how to improve
0:45.6	malt production have saved the brewing industry millions.
0:50.2	But his route into science wasn't a conventional one.
0:52.4	He was classed by his first London school
0:55.2	as educationally sub-normal. Despite this, he went on to climb the ranks of academia,
1:00.9	and in 1990 became Scotland's first black professor.
1:04.3	As he says one of his great joys is looking at rows of beers and shops across the world
1:09.2	and knowing who brewed each bottle because he was the one who taught them. Despite being
1:14.4	retired he's still carrying out research but now he makes his discoveries in his
1:19.2	kitchen. Jeff Palmer welcome to their life scientific.
1:22.5	Thank you.
1:23.5	Jeff, I think many people might not realize that there's a lot of scientific research behind brewing and distilling
1:29.8	and, if anything, assume that it's a process that's been the same for hundreds if not
1:33.7	thousands of years? Well yes I think the general public believe that beer is
	...

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