Before this BBC podcast kicks off I'd like to tell you about some others you might enjoy.

My name's Will Wilkin and I Commission Music Podcast for the BBC.

It's a really cool job, but every day we get to tell the incredible stories behind songs, moments and movements,

stories of struggle and success, rises and falls, the funny, the ridiculous.

And the BBC's position at the heart of British music means we can tell those stories like no one else.

We were, are and always will be right there at the center of the narrative.

So whether you want an insightful take on music right now or a nostalgic deep dive into some of the most famous and

infamous moments in music check out the music podcasts on BBC Sounds.

Hello and welcome to the Life Scientific coming to you complete with audience from the Royal Astronomical Society

Headquarters at London's Burlington House.

This is a place that holds special importance for my guest today, who first became a member of the RAS as an eager young

student of physics back in the 1970s and is now just coming to the end of his

two-year term as a society's president. Mike Edmonds is an emeritus professor of astrophysics at Cardiff University

where he's worked for some 50 years.

And although physics is his first love, Mike is fascinated by an array of disciplines from statistics to

amateur dramatics to history. Wide-ranging interests that once prompted a PhD supervisor

to describe him slightly tongue-in- in cheek as a de la Tante. But Dablers seldom enjoy such success. Mike's achievements

range from interpreting the spread of chemical elements in the universe to decoding the world's

oldest known astronomical artifact to performing his one man play about Sir Isaac Newton.

More about that shortly.

Mike says he's taken great satisfaction

in a career that's allowed him to think

...