Poetry and Science: A 19th century metre on the (uni)verse

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 22 January 2020

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Astrophysicist Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, poets Sam Illingworth and Sunayana Bhargava, and C19 expert and New Generation Thinker Greg Tate from the University of St Andrews join Anne McElvoy to discuss the parallels between poetry and Victorian laboratory work.

Dame Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, is perhaps most famous for first discovering Pulsars - strange spinning massively dense stars that emit powerful regular pulses of radiation. she has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Institute of Physics, and more recently was recipient of the Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. Alongside, she collects poetry related to Astronomy.

Greg Tate's next book looks at the physical and metaphysical part of rhythm in verse by C19 physical scientists. Sam Illingworth's book "Sonnet to Science" looks at several scientists who have resorted to poetry in their work. Sunayana Bhargava works at University of Sussex studying distant galactic clusters, and is also a practising poet. Previously she was Barbican young Poet.

You can hear Greg discussing the 19th-century scientist and mountaineer John Tyndall in a Free Thinking programme which also looks at mountains through the eyes of artist Tacita Dean https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b3fkt3 and a short feature about poetry and science in the 19th century https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04n2zcp

Tristram Hunt, Director of the V&A Museum and Sir Paul Nurse, Director of the Francis Crick Institute, debate the divide and the links between arts and science in a Free Thinking debate recording at Queen Mary University London https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0001f5f

Producer: Alex Mansfield.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?
0:23.3	It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's
0:27.5	out of ice cream.
0:28.8	Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.
0:32.3	Hello and thanks for downloading this Arts and Ideas podcast from the BBC.
0:37.5	Shortly, we'll be exploring the interwoven story of science and poetry,
0:41.4	from the 19th century to the present day.
0:44.1	But before that, a brief word about something else.
0:48.7	Music that stops you in your tracks.
0:53.0	And a man who became a hero.
0:57.5	A composer who inspired the world.
1:02.7	I'm Donald Bacloud.
1:04.6	Join me as I make an epic podcast journey
1:07.3	through the life, music and ideas
1:09.3	of Ludwig van Beethoven.
1:11.6	I'll be telling his story in unprecedented detail throughout 2020.
1:16.6	The Secret Love Affairs, his tragic hearing loss, disasters and triumphs, struggle and transcendence. It's a story to inspire with music that just might
1:31.7	change your life. In 20 years of presenting Composer of the Week, I've never attempted
1:41.1	anything this ambitious before.
1:46.0	I'd love you to join me.
1:50.8	Just search for Composer of the Week in BBC Sounds and press subscribe. BOR. The Hello. Disorder there from the 1979 Joy Division album, Hidden Pleasures.
2:30.1	What on earth, you may ask, can that possibly have to do with the poetry of such giants of 19th century physical scientists, Humphrey Davie or James Clark Maxwell?
	...

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