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 2007.

Music My castaway this week is the leading British scientist Sir Tom Blundle.

From medical advances in the treatment of diseases such as diabetes, AIDS and cancer,

to his radical recommendations on climate change,

his accomplishments have fundamentally shifted our understanding and cancer to his radical recommendations on climate change, his accomplishments have fundamentally shifted our understanding and approach to some of the biggest challenges of our age.

Indeed, his only spectacular failure is his inability to conform to the cliché of the

white-coated boffin wedded to his microscope and unable to engage in life beyond the lab.

Whether it's mapping out the tiniest building blocks of life,

playing the trumpet in a jazz band,

or the love affair that saw him paying for his wife in cows

in a traditional ceremony on the plains of Zimbabwe,

he is endlessly inspired to experience firsthand

the wonder he finds in the world around him.

Tom, you've lived a very full life so far.

Is the passion for scientific understanding inseparable from the passion to experience?

It is. I love my science. It's incredibly stimulating. I find it the most exciting thing I do.

But I can't do it without doing other things in parallel.

So even when I was a young scientist, I got involved in politics. It gave me a different dimension.

...