(by Paul Jobling, 3rd-year chemistry undergraduate, University of York)

We met up, appropriately as will become clear, in the "Norman Room", sharing a breathless hour before Adam rushed off to give a Christmas lecture in the physics department. He broke the ice with a whirlwind guide to his cv. From Henley-on-Thames, he graduated in chemistry at nearby Oxford in 1971. Like many determined, focused graduates - he hadn’t a clue what he wanted to do next! He took the advice of his Oxford tutor, Dick Norman, following him to York for Ph.D. studies. All this as the chemistry department at York, literally, took shape around him, under the guidance of Dick Norman. So that's why the department boasts the eponymous Norman Room to this day, and probably why it is, by some distance, the building's smartest room! His Ph.D. studies took place under the watchful eye of our very own admissions tutor, Roger Mawby. Since being faced with this reminder of the passing years, Roger has decided that perhaps it's time to hang up his labcoat! Happy retirement, Roger! Adam gained his doctorate and shot off to Canada for some post-doctoral work. Whilst there, he said the temperature never reached zero degrees, and that’s Fahrenheit of course, a chilly minus 17 degrees centigrade in the new money! Fully chemistry’d up, he returned to find a UK labour market bursting at the seams with keen young scientists and his academic career failed to materialise. Instead, Adam went into publishing, which was 'fun', and afforded stability whilst the young Hart-Davis’s were growing up. Along with success came the inevitable gravitation towards London and the larger publishing houses. This wasn’t for Adam who at 32 was looking for a change. He found it in a chance meeting with two Yorkshire TV presenters. He was taken on in 1977 and worked as a researcher on science programmes such as "Don’t Ask Me", "Where There’s Life" and "Arthur C Clarke's World of Strange Powers", the first programme he actually produced. During this period he researched or produced some 250-300 programmes. Clearly, some distance had been put between Adam and the chemistry that we eager undergraduates were expecting to hear about.

On the cusp of middle-age, Adam made an important decision - he bought himself a mountain bike! The idea was to recoup the fitness of his youth, using the bike as his primary means of transport between home, in Heckmondwike, and work in Leeds. It was whilst pitting his wits against the elements one day that he shot past a farmhouse sporting a plaque proclaiming it the birth place of scientist Joseph Priestley. The idea for "Local Heroes" - Adam's current BBC2 series - was hatched.

Having instantly put us at ease, his life-story-in-10-minutes left us with this mental image of a true polymath - graduate and doctor of chemistry, photographer, author, TV researcher, producer and presenter, cyclist, and technological historian specialising in scientists, inventors, and their inventions.

We hoped to get some comment from our own Local Hero on matters such as how the media generally might go about improving the presentation of scientific issues to the man on the street. After all, Adam had been working in and around that area for his whole career, either in print or in celluloid. He immediately brought up the recent adverse publicity on genetically modified (GM) crops and confessed to particular frustrations with the BBC on the matter. He felt that they could have done so much more to help people understand the issues behind the headlines. Instead, the lack of balance probably had the most devout vegetarians viewing their vegi-stroganoff with suspicion, and us meat-eaters sticking to meat, except beef perhaps! Adam claims to have torn a strip off the Beeb for failing to broadcast a couple of well-balanced documentaries on the subject, answering key questions like; are they toxic? Will they give us green hair? Or babies with two heads? Will they damage the ecosystem? And why are people doing it? 'As soon as you have some facts, things become a lot easier', Adam reckons.

He expressed his outrage at a dinner to which the BBC had invited him - that's gratitude for you! He told them that they had failed to respond to the public's need for information on the GM issue. "And they all agreed, that's what was so interesting, they all agreed.... even the [BBC] science department!" This begged the question, given unanimous support for Adam's idea, why hadn't any programmes been made? What followed was an explanation of how the BBC's internal structure undermines its ability to deliver science to its viewers. Essentially, the scientists do not get high enough up in the "batting order" to dictate any kind of policy. The science correspondents in the news team carry all the kudos and the great majority of them have no scientific background. Hence, key scientific issues are often entwined in the news headlines and alarmist topics of the day. This, in turn, can and does cast much science in a bad light with the public.

Happily, Adam's current 5-man independent production team are not hampered by the archaic structure of the BBC. Programme planning meetings are "big arguments", but friendly ones! After these, Adam usually gets some say in what each programme will cover. He currently has a 'hit list' of 100 local heroes, the ones he can't wait to bring to our screens. William Scoresby (the whaler from Whitby), William of Occam, and Thomas Malthus are currently riding high. Adam enjoys the process of turning an initial idea into a finished piece for broadcast. It's a role, he claims gleefully, for which he has a natural talent. Increasingly, he finds less and less time to prepare the all-important props which so masterfully illuminate the 'Local Heroes' productions. The props are central to the visual impact of the programme. Very often, if there are no props, there is no story, at least not as far as 'Local Heroes' is concerned.

He returns to the example of the 13^th century monk, William of Occam, who left us with a particular nugget of advice: "Never multiply entities unnecessarily". It's an important statement which prizes the role of simplicity in scientific explanations. To illustrate this, Adam embarks on a fanciful story involving angels, ping-pong bats and helium-filled balloons, all of which soon makes it quite clear that there's no prop in this case! Even if there were angels around with Equity cards, they'd probably all be on Sky! So, poor old Occam might never make our screens. Ask the production team about running an episode on James Watt though and they're building a steam engine before you've had chance to add the question mark! Of course, this is a brilliant prop and so begins another interesting production.

Adam pauses - it doesn't happen often! - and takes a sip of tea. It gives us chance to throw another question at him - why does his programme feature so few chemists, this question posed by our prettiest female colleague. Flashing a warm smile and almost cheeky grin Adam extends her question himself, "and so few women too!" "You see," he goes on, "chemistry just isn’t sexy enough!" Isn't that where the women come in, I think to myself! Anyway, there have been a few chemists, he explains. For example, Priestley, Joe Aspin (Portland cement) and Synge (the vital laboratory technique of chromatography). But some of the chemical stories he finds most interesting aren't actually associated with any one person. For example, those inventive Yorkshire folk of Whitby used to burn piles of local shale to produce alum, a fixing agent used in the dyeing of fabric. Substituting the brushwood fuel with seaweed produced a particular alum known as potash alum. More thought provokingly, ammonium alum was produced by covering these cliff-side pyres – which smouldered away for up to 12 months – with cloth sacking soaked in urine! Ugh! This chemistry is definitely not sexy! No shortage of props for this demo then, but no particular local hero!

Of course much of what we have been discussing with Adam is the fundamental problem of how to make science more palatable for the public. Everyone agreed that it is difficult to pitch the subject at the right level. Faced with a TV production harping on about "harmonic oscillators" and "bond dissociation energies", something we students hear rather too much about, then the adventures of Harold in 'Neighbours' will win every time! To raise the scientific baseline amongst the public, Adam is of the belief that everyone should study some science to A level. It's an interesting and controversial thought. And another one followed; universities are foolish to enrol some students on the back of one D grade at 'A'-level. Coming to university late in life myself, and with just a single 'A'-level to my name, I for one am glad that they do! Further disdain was meted out to those providing money for research. Adam wants to maintain an elitist practice, whereby larger sums of money are shared between fewer and better research groups. This, as opposed to the spreading of money amongst many universities. It's not an uncommon viewpoint and one to which Adam is entitled of course. With my background I have come to be grateful for flexibility and diversity in higher education - in who you let in, and in who you support to do research.

Having never heard of Adam Hart-Davis prior to this interview, I asked a good friend of mine - a great Hart-Davis fan I now discover - for her impressions of him. "Kagool and bicycle clips!" she instantly replied, in a fanatical excited way. It's a view of himself which he returns to several times during our chat. Having spent an hour in his company, it's easy to see how his enthusiasm and idiosyncrasies can become infectious. Clearly his roots as a chemist have shaped the career of this astute, eloquent, likeable, big uncle of a man. It makes perfect sense that he should quote Richard Attenborough as the man he most admires. Adam already runs a schedule as jam packed as Attenborough's, he speaks with undergraduates and BBC directors with equal passion, is committed to bringing science into our living rooms and, all in all, left me with no doubt just who Adam Hart-Davis really is!