Mark Lythgoe
The Life Scientific
BBC
4.6 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 3 September 2013
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Professor Mark Lythgoe created and runs the largest medical imaging research facility in Europe - the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging at University College London. That is quite an achievement for someone who spectacularly failed his A levels because he was dancing on the podiums of Manchester clubs or tuning the engine of his motorbike.
Now the Centre does everything from testing new treatments for cancer, stroke and heart disease to probing the homing sense of pigeons. Mark Lythgoe's team develops new techniques to image the living body and its biochemical activities in ever-minute detail, with radio, light and ultrasound waves.
In The Life Scientific, Mark Lythgoe talks about the frontier research at his centre and the thrill he gets from it. As well as a scientist, he is also an intrepid mountain climber and believes there are parallels between the experiences of a mountaineer and those of an inventor of new views of the human brain and body.
Professor Lythgoe talks candidly about his unconventional journey and struggle to make a successful career in science which took him through making plastic pipes in a factory, training Israeli attack dogs and working with Australian Aboriginal people. He describes the deep sense of failure which powered with his progress once he had a foot in the laboratory door.
Mark also discusses his collaborations with artists on sci-art projects. He says one film project about a young girl with a severe brain condition helped to make him the scientist he is today.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Once you've wrapped up this podcast, how about trying a very British cult? |
| 0:06.0 | What happens if the person you trust with your future isn't what you think they are? |
| 0:10.0 | I did feel the whole time he was watching me Yeti. I saw a footprint and that really gave me gusmas. |
| 0:16.4 | Or people who knew me. Emme, I remember every secret, every lie. I'm the only one who knows the truth. |
| 0:23.0 | Discover more of our biggest podcast from 2003. |
| 0:27.0 | Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:29.0 | Thank you for downloading The Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:34.0 | My guest today is Mark Lithgow. |
| 0:36.0 | At the age of 18, Mark would never have imagined he'd become a professor at University College London |
| 0:42.0 | and the head of the largest medical imaging research facility in Europe. |
| 0:46.0 | At school Mark ended up passing just one of his A levels, scraping an E grade in physics. |
| 0:52.0 | He then wandered through a variety of jobs from making plastic |
| 0:56.2 | pipes in a factory to training attack dogs in Israel. And that's when he wasn't climbing |
| 1:01.7 | and cycling up and down mountains. |
| 1:04.0 | Then, without having been to university at all, he managed to talk his way into doing a master's |
| 1:09.8 | degree in behavioral biology. The rest is history as well as rising rapidly through the |
| 1:15.7 | academic ranks and raising over 35 million pounds for his center for |
| 1:20.4 | advanced biomedical imaging, Mark has been one of the pioneers in the movement |
| 1:25.2 | to bring the sciences and the arts closer together. |
| 1:28.8 | He's collaborated with a number of artists and other scientists on films and exhibitions and is currently of Hi Jim it's really good to be here. Now for you what is what would you say is the fascination |
| 1:44.9 | with imaging brains and other sort of living things in the way that you're able to in your lab? |
| 1:51.6 | I think for me one of the most beautiful things is to see part of |
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