Sir Aaron Klug

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2002

⏱️ 35 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sir Aaron Klug grew up in Durban, South Africa on the edge of the Bush, which provided him with enough snakes and monkeys to satisfy his curiosity. A bright child, he read anything that was available and enjoyed an idyllic childhood. He started studying medicine at university level in Johannesburg at the age of fifteen, but soon switched to chemistry, physics and mathematics, which provided more stimulus for his enquiring mind.

He began to research at Cape Town University and later Cambridge, where he joined the world-famous Cavendish Laboratory and later the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. His work led to him winning the Nobel prize for Chemistry in 1982 for his work on cell structure.

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

Favourite track: The Ode to Joy (Symphony No 9) by Ludwig van Beethoven Book: A set of books on Roman Republican and Imperial coinage Luxury: A set of mixed Greek and Roman coinage

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Kirstie Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.
0:05.0	For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.
0:08.0	The program was originally broadcast in 2002, and the presenter was Sue Lolly. My cost way this week is a scientist 20 years ago he won the Nobel Prize for chemistry,
0:36.0	given to him for his pioneering work on the structure of genes which has been of crucial importance
0:41.1	in our understanding of the nature of cancer.
0:43.8	As one commentator described his achievement at the time, it means we can peer right inside a living
0:49.0	cell to watch the wheels go round.
0:51.8	Born in Lithuania but brought up in South Africa he learned in the free
0:55.6	unpressured environment of his childhood to open his mind to anything which engaged his curiosity.
1:01.5	Academic and intellectual success has not contained this
1:05.1	natural freedom of spirit. Curiosity he claims is probably the strongest
1:09.7	single source of knowledge and advance. He is Sir Aaron Klug. And does such
1:15.0	curiosity diminish with age, Sir Aaron, or are you as interested as ever in knowing
1:19.4	how things work? Talent in my case, it's increased as the world we know gets more complicated.
1:27.0	Do you think you're born with that kind of curiosity? Is it something that's inculcated as a result of your environment?
1:35.3	I think you're born with it.
1:37.3	The environment helps.
1:39.0	Growing up in Durbin is a very colourful experience,
1:41.8	all sorts of very lively, different cultures,
1:45.0	mixing, different languages.
1:47.6	But there are many of my school contemporaries
1:51.4	didn't show any interest in the things around them.
	...

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