Desert Island Discs: Archive 1996-20004 Jan 1998

Professor Heinz Wolff

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the scientist Professor Heinz Wolff. He came to public attention when he presented the television programme The Great Egg Race, in which he challenged people to conquer engineering problems with a rubber band, a pencil and a pickled onion. In the 1970s while designing aids for disabled people, he devised the phrase 'Tools for Living' to describe his work. After all, as he points out, we all use tools to cope with our environment, whether as an astronaut, a diver or an elderly person.

It was his father who encouraged his enthusiasm for invention, sharing his Sunday afternoons experimenting with his chemistry set, or organising talks from physicists who had to hide their surprise at assessing the ideas of a six-year-old child. In the 80s he founded the Institute for Bioengineering at Brunel University. There he continued his inventions devising for example, a box for experimenting in outer space, a voice machine for people who can't speak and a safety system for deep-sea divers.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: The Man I Love by Joan Wolff Book: Collection of Landscape Pictures (with book) Luxury: A Collection Of Landscape Pictures

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Episoder(124)

Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber. His musicals dominate London's West End, including Cats, Phantom of the Opera and Starlight Express. He traces a career which began more than 3...

31 Des 199936min

Michael Crawford

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Crawford. Renowned for his attention to detail, he has always performed his own stunts - whether roller-skating under moving lorries in Some Mothers Do Have 'Em...

24 Des 199936min

Michael Nyman

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Michael Nyman. Said to be the best-selling classical composer in Britain, as a child visiting the opera or concert hall his imagination would be caught by a particularl...

19 Des 199937min

Oz Clarke

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Oz Clarke. As a wine expert, he has sipped, slurped and spat his way through thousands of vintages from around the world. Renowned for his enthusiasm for trying new fla...

12 Des 199935min

Sir Richard Sykes

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Sir Richard Sykes. The chairman of Glaxo Welcome, as a boy he was not a natural scholar, until he went to work at the pathology laboratory of his local hospital. Unders...

5 Des 199938min

Warren Mitchell

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Warren Mitchell. Arthur Miller praised his portrayal of Willie Loman in Death of a Salesman. His King Lear and Shylock won critical acclaim. But he will always be remem...

28 Nov 199937min

Clarissa Dickson Wright

Sue Lawley's guest this week is Clarissa Dickson Wright.Born into a home where caviar was more common than fish paste, she has always been surrounded by fine food. Yet she came to cooking as a profess...

21 Nov 199935min

William Gibson

This week the castaway on Desert Island Discs is William Gibson. Long before the existence of the Internet, he wrote about 'cyberspace', a boundless world reached only through computers. External spac...

19 Nov 199934min