Desert Island Discs Revisited

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BBC Radio 4 Extra

Factual: Life Stories

Selected castaway gems from the BBC Desert Island Discs archive.

Desert Island Discs Revisited: Nobel Prize Winners: Dr Max Perutz

Dr Max Perutz

Nobel Prize Winners

Desert Island Discs

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Desert Island Discs Revisited, Nobel Prize Winners, Dr Max Perutz

The Nobel scientist Max Perutz shares his castaway choices with Sue Lawley.

From Leonard Bernstein to Rossini. Nobel scientist Max Perutz shares his castaway choices with Sue Lawley. From June 2000.

Sue Lawley's castaway is Dr Max Perutz. When he left Austria in 1936 to study at Cambridge, his fellow students dismissed his ambition to decipher the structure of the protein haemoglobin as 'mad'. No-one had seriously attempted to map a molecule that was made up of 10,000 atoms. 

Twenty-two years later he was successful. It was an achievement that earned him and his colleague John Kendrew the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1962 - and has since contributed to the study of blood diseases like sickle cell anaemia and Huntington's disease.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in June 2000.

Desert Island Discs Revisited: Nobel Prize Winners

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Kirsty Young introduces gems from the Desert Island Discs archive

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