Professor Jean Golding, epidemiologist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 11 December 2022

⏱️ 36 minutes

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Summary

Professor Jean Golding is an epidemiologist who is best known for founding the Children of the Nineties study - more formally known as the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children. The most detailed project of its kind anywhere in the world, it has followed the lives of children who were born in Avon during 1991 and 1992 and helped scientists make important discoveries about everything from peanut allergy to the effects of long Covid. Jean was born in Cornwall in 1939. As a toddler she suffered two bouts of tuberculosis and spent several weeks in hospital. Then at 13 she contracted polio, leading to a three-month hospital stay. After graduating in mathematics from Oxford University, her first job involved completing calculations for the 1958 perinatal mortality survey, set up to collect information about the social and obstetric factors associated with stillbirth and death in early infancy. By the time she started designing the Children of the Nineties study, Jean was well used to working with large data-sets, but the new project was bigger than ever. It collected more than 1.5m biological samples including blood, placenta, hair, nails and teeth along with thousands of questionnaires. As well as expanding medical knowledge, the study has influenced government policy. Jean retired from the study in 2005. She was awarded an OBE for services to medical science in 2012 and today is Emeritus Professor of Paediatric and Perinatal Epidemiology at the University of Bristol. DISC ONE: The ‘Trelawny’ National Anthem by The Fisherman’s Friends DISC TWO: Under Milk Wood (Part 1) read by Richard Burton DISC THREE: Bad Penny Blues by Humphrey Lyttelton DISC FOUR: Dawn Chorus by BBC Sound Effects DISC FIVE: The Hippopotamus Song by Flanders & Swann DISC SIX: A Hymn to Him by Rex Harrison DISC SEVEN: Piano Quintet in A Major, Op. Posth. 114, D. 667 "The Trout": I. Allegro vivace by Melos Ensemble DISC EIGHT: Bring Me Sunshine by Morecambe and Wise BOOK CHOICE: The Oxford Book of Twentieth-century English Verse LUXURY ITEM: A mobility power chair CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Dawn Chorus by BBC Sound Effects Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.9	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.6	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them
0:13.9	if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.4	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.2	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:44.8	My cast away this week is the epidemiologist Professor Jean Golden.
0:48.8	If you visit Bristol University, you'll find that the Institute of Data Science bears her name.
0:54.5	It was at Bristol that she began a biobank before the word even existed.
0:59.3	It's widely known as the Children of the 90s study.
1:02.3	All more formally, the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.
1:06.7	It's now a unique, world-famous resource, containing over a million samples taken of the course of 30 years.
1:13.5	A treasure trove of data that has led to global discoveries about everything from
1:18.1	God death, obesity and not allergies to the way our grandparents' health can influence our own well-being.
1:25.0	Persuading others to see the value of this work wasn't easy, especially since,
1:29.8	statistically speaking, she's always been an outlier.
1:33.2	When she first started at Bristol, she was a woman in a man's world,
1:36.8	a mathematician doing medical research.
1:39.2	And there was also a certain amount of pressure to declutter her frankly enormous collection of placenters.
1:44.9	Luckily, Professor Golden is used to overcoming challenges.
1:48.3	She faced numerous bouts of serious illness, including polio during childhood.
1:53.1	Long stays in hospital, disrupted her education,
	...

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