In 1928, as America heads towards the Wall Street Crash, Joseph Stalin reveals his master plan - nature is to be conquered by science, Russia to be made brutally, glitteringly modern and the world transformed by communist endeavour. Into the heart of this vision stepped Trofim Lysenko, a self-taught geneticist who promised to turn Russian wasteland into a grain-laden Garden of Eden.

Frankenstein may seem an outlandish tale, but Mary Shelley wrote it when science was alive with ideas about what differentiated the living from the dead. This was Vitalism, a belief that living things possessed some spark of life, some vital principle that lifted them above dull matter. Electricity was a very real candidate.

As part of the BBC's year of science programming, Melvyn Bragg looks at the history of the oldest scientific learned society of them all: the Royal Society.Episode one travels to Oxford, where the young Christopher Wren and friends experimented.

How Newton tested the lines between government-funded research and public access.

The 19th century blooms scientifically with numerous alternative, specialist societies.

The more discreet role played by the Society in the 20th century.

What is being done to stop more data being lost in the future, now that we've all gone digital: from an Internet Archive, to the preservation of government emails, and from concrete bunkers for nitrate films to a unique newspaper repository. For example, the US national archives have to make sure they keep all federal government emails. The Clinton White House alone produced 32 million emails, while those of his administration as a whole run into billions. President Clinton himself only ever wrote one email while in office. Who to? Richard Hollingham can reveal all....

A timely investigation into the loss of cultural, public and historical records, both analogue and digital, as a result of deterioration or advances in technology. Richard Hollingham investigates specific examples of what is now unplayable or unreadable. For example, he can reveal for the first time, that the UK population census data from 1951 are lost, as are significant parts of the 1961 and 1971 census data. And he hears from the long-term percussionist of The Grateful Dead, Mickey Hart, why the Grateful Dead, unlike other leading touring bands, still have all their master tapes intact. He also finds out about successful efforts on both sides of the Atlantic for preserving and recuperating sound and music.

Len Fisher wonders how the body would work if we had a go at remaking ourselves. Len confronts his reflection, and dreams about what he could do to make his skin more appealing.

A hundred years on from Albert Einstein's 'miracle year' of 1905, Radio 4 talks to writers and artists who have wrestled with the scientific legacy of modern physics in their work. Michael Frayn's acclaimed stage play, Copenhagen, opened at the National Theatre in 1998. The story of a meeting between two theoretical physicists during the early years of Second World War, it's been hailed as the most successful use of science on the stage.

With the help of fellow author and mathematician Ian Stewart, Pratchett explains his love of science, his fascination with Einstein and the science behind the fantasy world he's created and sold to more than 20 countries worldwide. "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" said Arthur C Clarke decades ago and it holds true today. Just try and explain how your mobile phone or dvd player works. With the help of fellow author and mathematician Ian Stewart, Pratchett explains his love of science, his fascination with Einstein and the science behind the fantasy world he's created and sold to more than 20 countries worldwide.

Comedian Mark Steel has delved into the great man's life and found a great deal to laugh about, if only in theory. "Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe." (AE). One doesn't normally associate humour with physics but Einstein has proved the exception, at least for two artists. The first is New Yorker Sid Harris who's been churning out science cartoons for reputable journals since the late sixties.Comedian Mark Steel has delved into the great man's life and found a great deal to laugh about, if only in theory.

Two physicists turned novelists - Gregory Benford and Andrew Crumey share their thoughts on the nature of time and Einstein's theories of Special and General relativity through their [respective] books Timescape and Mobius Dick. Whilst both writers can be placed in the genre of science fiction, their stories are firmly rooted in the latest research and theoretical musings of Einstein's latter-day followers.

BBC Washington correspondent Justin Webb investigates claims that the US government is manipulating scientific research.

To most of us, viruses are the cause of illnesses like flu and measles. But to Angela Belcher of MIT, they’re the ideal building blocks for creating new materials at close to the atomic scale, in the new science of nanotechnology.

Scientists need no longer be afraid to ask the big questions about what it means to be human with empirical evidence now answering ancient philosophical questions about meaning and existence

How does the activity of the 100 billion little wisps of protoplasm - the neurons in your brain - give rise to all the richness of our conscious experience, including the "redness" of red, the painfulness of pain or the exquisite flavour of Marmite or Vindaloo?

Professor Ramachandran draws on neurological case studies and work from ethology (animal behavior) to present a new framework for understanding how the brain creates and responds to art. He will use examples mainly from Indian art and Cubism to illustrate these ideas.

Professor Ramachandran demonstrates experimentally that the phenomenon of synesthaesia is a genuine sensory effect. For example, some subjects literally "see" red every time they see the number 5 or green when they see 2.

Professor Ramachandran argues that neuroscience, perhaps more than any other discipline, is capable of transforming man's understanding of himself and his place in the cosmos.

Since time immemorial people have been entranced by structures of great size. From the Colossus of Rhodes and the Great Pyramid, themselves no mean technical achievements, to the mighty Cunard 'Queens' built here in Glasgow, and whichever is transiently the tallest building in the world, beholders have gaped at the gigantic. One simple attraction has been that of comparative scale, so many times the size of a man or a horse or of Nelson's column, as popular illustrations used to show. It was easy for the bystander immediately to apprehend the vast size of these objects...

Scientific Horizons: Martin Rees, President of the Royal Society, Master of Trinity College and Astronomer Royal, delivers four lectures exploring the challenges facing science in the 21st century.In the first lecture he asks who we should trust to explain the risks we face.

Does science have the answers to help us save our planet?

Academic reading skills for low intermediate / intermediate students in the areas of maths, science, business, and social science. Also has practice of reading graphs, tables and charts

The aim of this book is to help improve the reading skills of intermediate students of English who need those skills for social science disciplines at university. The texts used in the book are chosen from a wide range of social science disciplines such as politics, psychology, history, sociology and economics.

This book is intended to prepare students to participate in basic science courses, especially by aiming to develop concepts of critical thinking and inquiry. It integrates the four basic language skills - reading, writing, listening and speaking - to facilitate the leap from basic English to academic English and prepare students to comprehend and use college-level science material

Comtemporary western societies are becoming "knowledge societies," that run on expert processes and expert systems epitomised by science and structured into all areas of social life. By looking at epistemic cultures in two sample cases, this book addresses pressing questions about how such expert systems and processes work, what principles inform their cognitive and procedural orientations and whether their organisation, structures and operations can be extended to other forms of social order

This book is a comprehensive course for intermediate level learners who need to understand and use the English of computing for study and work

In this book Arthur Miller brings together some of the profoundest mysteries of both art and science. Displaying a subtle grasp of subjects as divergent as quantum physics, Cubist painting, and philosophy of mind, the author shows how some of the great geniuses of the past few centuries had to change the way they saw in order to achieve their greatest works

"Life in the Freezer" is an exciting new natural history of the Antarctic. Less celebrated than its northern equivalent, it boasts an equal blend of extraordinary wildlife and stunning scenery. In this book, Alastair Fothergill traces the region's seasonal cycle and explains how marine, mammal, bird and plant life survive in one of the harshest climates on earth