Adam Rutherford
The geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford tells Michael Berkeley how his passion for music allows him to escape the rigours of science and enjoy the emotional side of life.
Adam Rutherford\u2019s career in science has taken him from a PhD on the role of genetics in eye development to becoming a well-known broadcaster who campaigns against pseudoscience and racism.
Presenter of Radio 4\u2019s Start the Week and The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, he\u2019s also the author of six bestselling books; a lecturer at University College London; and the recipient of the Royal Society David Attenborough Award for outstanding public engagement with science.
Adam shares some astonishing facts about our genes and our common ancestry: everyone of European descent is definitely directly descended from the eighth-century Emperor Charlemagne \u2013 and from the person who cleaned his boots.
Adam was a music scholar at school and his passion for the violin started with lessons at the age of four and culminated in playing with his teacher in Berlioz\u2019s Symphonie Fantastique. We also hear his favourite piece of violin music, Beethoven\u2019s Violin Concerto. Adam is the President of Humanists UK but asks for music from his two musical gods, Bach and Radiohead.
Producer: Jane Greenwood\nA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3