Mr Don't Know-it-All

Added: 2026-05-16

[00:00:00]It's an interesting role this uh Professor for the public understanding of science because I think when I tell people this title I think they they sort of expect that I must know the whole of science and here I am to explain it to the public. Uh but there are all limitations. I remember one time when a journalist phoned me up the Nobel Prize for medicine had just been announced for the discovery of telomeres and the journalist asked me, "So, Professor for the public understanding of science uh tell me what a telomere is." And I I must say my biology is probably my weakest bit of science. Um so I'm very embarrassed to admit that I did pull it up on Wikipedia and uh tell her, "Well, I think it's the bit at the end of the DNA uh that's preserved." And so I realized there are some limitations. So one of the skills of being the Professor for the public understanding of science is finding other wonderful scientists that we have here at the University of Oxford who can explain some of the science that I don't know so much about.