Jim Al-Khalili's Life Scientific

In an ideal (quantum) world, Jim Al-Khalili would be interviewing
himself about his life as a scientist but since the production
team can’t access a parallel universe, Adam Rutherford is
stepping in to ask Jim questions in front of an audience at The
Royal Society. Jim and his family left Iraq in 1979, two weeks
before Saddam Hussein came to power, abandoning most of their
possessions.


Having grown up listening to the BBC World Service, he had to
drop his ts to fit in at school in Portsmouth where he was one of
just three boys in a class of more than a hundred girls. He
specialised in nuclear physics and spent fifteen years in front
of a computer screen trying to understand an exotic and ephemeral
sub-atomic phenomenon known as the halo effect. His ‘little
eureka moment’ came in 1996 when Jim discovered that, for the
mathematics to add up, these halo nuclei had to be a lot bigger
than anyone had thought. It isn’t going to lead to a new kind of
non-stick frying pan any time soon but it was exciting,
nonetheless. More recently he has become interested in quantum
biology. It started as a hobby back in the 1990s when physicists
were sceptical and many biologists were unconvinced. Since then
evidence has been stacking up. Several studies suggest that
lasting quantum mechanical effects could explain photosynthesis,
for example. 'It maybe a red herring’ Jim admits but Jim and his
team at the University of Surrey are determined to find out if
the idea of quantum biology makes sense. Could life itself depend
on quantum tunnelling and other bizarre features of the
sub-atomic world?


Produced by Anna Buckley. First broadcast on Tuesday 5th February
2019.