The Life Scientific, a new series of 30-minute programmes, begins this morning on Radio 4 at 9.00, repeated in the evening at 9.30. Each week Jim Al-Khalili, Professor of Physics at Surrey University, will invite a leading scientist to talk about their life and work, to find out what first inspired them towards their field of research and what motivates them to keep going. The programme will also feature short drop-ins from fellow scientists, commenting on the guest’s early career, the implications of their discoveries, or offering alternative perspectives. The first programme features geneticist Paul Nurse, Nobel Laureate and President of the Royal Society, whose career has been far from predictable.

Future programmes will focus on, amongst others, the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker; astronomer Jocelyn Bell-Burnell; the brains behind the Human Genome Project, John Sulston; epidemiologist Michael Marmot; neuroscientist Colin Blakemore; and Molly Stevens, a tissue engineer whose work growing bones could mean the end of metal pins for broken legs.