Anya Hurlbert
If you\u2019ve ever wondered why you love blue and hate the colour khaki, or have spent hours arguing over a colour chart because you and your partner can\u2019t agree on how to paint the bedroom, you\u2019ll be fascinated by Professor Anya Hurlbert. She\u2019s a neuroscientist and a leading researcher into how the brain perceives colour, and why we feel so strongly about it. Brought up in Texas, studying at Princeton and Harvard, she is now Professor of Visual Neuroscience at the University of Newcastle; she\u2019s also spent years advising the National Gallery on how to show their pictures so we can see the colours most vividly. She\u2019s married to the science writer Matt Ridley.
In conversation with Michael Berkeley, Anya Hurlbert discusses the scientific research that reveals the world\u2019s favourite colour: blue. She talks about how the brain processes colour, and why colour perception is so individual and so bafflingly complex. A few years ago for instance, ten million people took to Twitter to argue about the colour of \u2018The Dress\u2019 \u2013 was it blue and black, or white and gold? Professor Hurlbert got hold of the real dress, put it in a tent in Newcastle, and invited people to come look at it. So, can she tell us what colour it is really?
Music is incredibly important in Anya Hurlbert\u2019s life, and she grew up with an ambition to be a concert pianist. She still finds that playing Bach \u2018calms her soul\u2019. Music choices include Bach, Beethoven, and two composers she believes should be better known: Thea Musgrave and Elisabeth Lutyens. She chooses a song by Schubert which is all about the colour green. And she reveals her passion for country music, with Jerry Jeff Walkers \u201cUp Against the Wall, Red Neck Mother\u201d.
Produced by Elizabeth Burke.\nA Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3