Hello, I'm Kirstie Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Disks from BBC Radio 4.

For rights reasons, the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

For more information about the program, please visit BBC.co.uk.

Radio 4. My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Brian Cox. When he was

embarking on his doctoral research into high energy particle physics he can

barely have thought it would make him the

face of science for a generation. In the press, he's the pop star turn pin-up professor. Indeed,

his TV programs are credited with creating the Brian Cox effect, a significant surge in the

number of would-be scientists applying to university.

By his own admission he was a nerdy kid, asking for a fusebox for his 10th birthday but as a teenager

he decided to be a rock star wired up his own synthesizer to kick start his career got a recording

contract at 18 and toured the world.

His band D. Reim had a number one hit with things can only get better.

These days it could be the theme tune to his mission to improve funding for science research in the UK. He says

history shows us that simply being curious about the universe and allowing ourselves

to explore it is by far the best way to make discoveries that eventually change everybody's lives.

I wonder Brian Cox, as a university research fellow at the Royal Society, you're supposed

to educate us about science.

How do you think you're doing? I think more inspire people

to learn is what I'm trying to do at the moment. I'm at the University of

Manchester. I am an academic and one of my jobs as you said I am a Royal

Society University Research Fellow and one of the jobs is to promote science I

...