Professor Heinz Wolff

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 4 January 1998

⏱️ 34 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the scientist Professor Heinz Wolff. He came to public attention when he presented the television programme The Great Egg Race, in which he challenged people to conquer engineering problems with a rubber band, a pencil and a pickled onion. In the 1970s while designing aids for disabled people, he devised the phrase 'Tools for Living' to describe his work. After all, as he points out, we all use tools to cope with our environment, whether as an astronaut, a diver or an elderly person.

It was his father who encouraged his enthusiasm for invention, sharing his Sunday afternoons experimenting with his chemistry set, or organising talks from physicists who had to hide their surprise at assessing the ideas of a six-year-old child. In the 80s he founded the Institute for Bioengineering at Brunel University. There he continued his inventions devising for example, a box for experimenting in outer space, a voice machine for people who can't speak and a safety system for deep-sea divers.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: The Man I Love by Joan Wolff Book: Collection of Landscape Pictures (with book) Luxury: A Collection Of Landscape Pictures

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive.
0:06.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:09.1	The program was originally broadcast in 1998, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cast away this week is a scientist and inventor. He escaped Nazi Germany with his father,
0:36.0	came to Britain and joined the Medical Research Council where he stayed for 30 years.
0:41.0	There he developed his talent for inventing things in order to solve problems, an ability
0:45.8	which won a popular airing on the BBC television programme The Great Egg Race, which he presented
0:50.4	for nine years. In the early 80s he founded the Institute for Bioengineering
0:55.2	at Brunel University. There his inventive ability was allowed full flow. A box
1:00.3	for experimenting in outer space, a voice machine for people who can't speak, a safety
1:05.1	system for deep sea divers.
1:07.5	These and many other inventions have made his department not only an important research unit, but a highly successful commercial operation as well.
1:15.0	He loves to popularise science and cheerfully boasts that he can make mechanical and
1:21.0	electrical devices last almost indefinitely.
1:24.5	He is Professor Hines-Wulf.
1:27.0	So when did you and your wife last buy a vacuum cleaner, Professor Wolf?
1:32.0	Not for a very long time because I feel somehow my manhood is challenged by a piece of domestic equipment
1:39.2	which doesn't work.
1:40.4	But you actively enjoy the sitting down and the taking of something to pieces and the working it out. I mean do you lose all sense of time?
1:47.2	Are you in heaven? I enjoy doing it. I also enjoy getting dirty and there's two ways of getting dirty. There's getting
1:56.3	dirty in the garden which is something which I have long agreed with my wife was
2:00.5	woman's work and getting dirty under the car which on greasy
2:05.1	is a greasy kind of dirt is much more satisfying which I really I can find it
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.