Hi, it's Nicola Cochlin. Young people have been making history for years, but we don't often hear about them. My brand new series on BBC Sounds sets out to put this right. In history's youngest heroes, I'll be revealing the fascinating stories of 12 young people who've played a major role in history and who've helped shape our world. Like Audrey Hepburn, Nelson Mandela, Louis Braille and Lady Jane Grey,

history's youngest heroes with me, Nicola Cochlin.

Listen on BBC Sounds.

Hello, I'm Krista Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009.

My My castaway this week is the scientist Kay Davis.

A leading geneticist, she has dedicated much of her life to finding a cure for the severest form of muscular dystrophy

and is tantalizingly close to realizing her ultimate ambition. Human trials for a

possible treatment will begin this year. A professor of genetics at Oxford, her work has also paved

the way for therapies for other genetic disorders like cystic fibrosis and diabetes. Quite something

for a woman who doesn't have an O-level in biology. Although even as a child, she did

possess that critical quality, crucial to scientific pioneers. I loved solving problems, she says.

I was very tenacious and I would sit in my room until I had finished the problem. I am a sticker.

Given that you are a sticker and it's a great word and that you do power away at things until you get it right, I am a sticker. Given that you are a sticker, and it's a great word, and that you

do power away at things until you get it right. I'm imagining, of course, with the type of work

you do, Katie, is that you're not able to take that work home, that it has meant many long

hours and long days at a lab bench. It does. I mean, it's very satisfying because you do it with a passion.

But biology is very unpredictable.

So some of the experiments you expect to work don't work.

And sometimes they work for three weeks, and the same experiment will stop working for another

three weeks.

...