Professor Dame Carol Robinson, scientist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 7 September 2025

⏱️ 51 minutes

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Summary

Professor Dame Carol Robinson is a scientist who was the first female professor of Chemistry at both Cambridge and Oxford Universities. She has been awarded scientific prizes from all over the world for her pioneering work studying complex macromolecules using an instrument called the mass spectrometer.

Carol was drawn to science as a child growing up in Folkstone where she started collecting flowers and shells before moving on to breeding mice because she was fascinated by their genetic makeup. She grew to love chemistry in particular and pored over the periodic table in her bedroom.

She left school at 16 and joined Pfizer, the pharmaceutical and biomedical company, as a laboratory technician. At Pfizer she began working with the mass spectrometer which measures the mass of all the atoms in a particular sample. She studied for an ONC and HNC in Chemistry in the evenings and at weekends and later gained a PHD in Chemistry from Cambridge University.

She was appointed DBE in 2013 for services to science and industry. In 2021 she founded the Kavli Institute for NanoScience Discovery, an interdisciplinary science institute dedicated to studying structures and materials at an ultra-small scale.

Carol has three children from her first marriage and lives in Oxfordshire with her second husband David.

DISC ONE: Girl on Fire - Alicia Keys DISC TWO: She’s Leaving Home - The Beatles DISC THREE: Prokofiev: Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2, Op. 64b: I. Montagues and Capulets - Dance of the Knights. Performed by London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Abbado DISC FOUR: Sonnet - The Verve DISC FIVE: Wild Horses - The Rolling Stones DISC SIX: Golden Brown - The Stranglers DISC SEVEN: Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin DISC EIGHT: The Scientist - Coldplay

BOOK CHOICE: The Herbal Apothecary: 100 Medicinal Herbs and How to Use Them by JJ Pursell LUXURY ITEM: A portable mass spectrometer CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Stairway to Heaven - Led Zeppelin

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're dead to me.
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0:21.7	She decides to take back some of the jewels with her. I'm taking these as well. I'm going to come back
0:27.3	for Tuscany one day as well. You're dead to me. Again, not you. Name of the show. Listen first on
0:33.7	BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts.
0:39.8	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4.
0:44.6	Every week, I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:52.0	For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast,
0:55.4	but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds.
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1:03.9	I hope you enjoy listening.
1:04.8	Music My castaway this week is the scientist Professor Dame Carol Robinson.
1:31.7	Her pioneering work uses a machine called the Mass Spectrometer,
1:35.6	which she's employed in new ways to study complex macromolecules in their natural state,
1:41.3	paving the way for innovations in drug discovery and novel ideas about the way
1:45.3	our bodies work. Today she has a global reputation and works at the Cavley Institute for
1:50.9	Nanoscience Discovery, an organisation she founded. She's been awarded scientific prizes from all
1:56.9	over the world, is a former president of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and was the first
	...

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