In the Dark

It’s been a couple of weeks since the University of Cambridge announced that the successor to Stephen Hawking as Lucasian Professor  of Mathematics would be Michael Green, who is best known for his work on string theory. Heartiest congratulations to him for reaching a position of such eminence.

I was trying to think of a suitable way of marking the occasion of his election to this prestigious post when I suddenly remembered that we were actually on a TV programme together years ago. The show in question was called Unravelling the Universe and was first broadcast in December 1991 as part of a science documentary series called Equinox.

I eventually found my ancient VHS copy of the broadcast master tape of this show and persuaded Ed and Stephen, two of the excellent elves that work in the School of Physics & Astronomy here at Cardiff University, to transfer it to a digital format and put a bit on Youtube for all to see. Many thanks to them for their help.

Other people involved in the programme included Rocky Kolb, Chris Isham and Paul Davies but the short (2-and-a-half minute) clip below features just Michael Green (who basically put the show together) and myself (who was just there to make up the numbers), plus wonderful narration by the late great Peter Jones.

Michael Green hasn’t changed a bit in 18 years. In fact, I saw him last year and am sure he was even wearing the same sweater.

I, on the other hand….Oh dear.

This entry was posted on October 30, 2009 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Biographical, The Universe and Stuff with tags Equinox, Lucasian Professor, Michael Green, Unravelling the Universe. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.