Baroness Susan Greenfield
Pharmocology, Lincoln
Leading Alzheimer’s researcher
What would be the three essential possessions that you would take with you and why?
If they had to be inanimate objects then I’d bring a take away curry, my MP3 player, and The Leopard by Lampedusa.
How much would you miss academia?
On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not missing it at all and 10 being unable to live without it, I would say 5.
In what way could you use your years of academic experience to help you survive?
I think it would be an advantage to be able to think philosophically and to think things through slowly and clearly. That can be very useful in tough circumstances.
You’ve run out of firewood, but have the complete works of Shakespeare at your disposal – what do you do?
If there was any sort of other fuel, then I wouldn’t burn it. But if it was freezing, and there was no other fuel, then obviously there would be no choice. But I would start with my least favourite plays and leave my favourite till the last.
If you had one person that you could take with you, from any period of history, other than a family member or loved one, who would it be and why?
Elizabeth I – I admire her hugely; she was multi-faceted and very intriguing. I would love to be able to talk to her.
You can take one album, one book, and one film with you; which would you choose and why?
Music: Blonde on Blonde – Bob Dylan
Book: The Leopard – Lampedusa
Film: The Seventh Seal – Ingmar Bergman
You can have an unlimited supply of chocolate, beer, or books; which do you choose?
Books. It would be hard to survive the boredom without books to read.
Ian Goldin
Economics, Balliol
Former Vice-President, World Bank
What would be the three essential possessions that you would take with you and why?
ipod – Music is the food of love. Food – For my love of life. Wine – To remember civilisation.
How much would you miss academia?
I would miss friends, including some academics.
In what way could you use your years of academic experience to help you survive?
My teaching as an economist would be vital. We are taught to assume – I would assume a rescue and whatever else I needed.
You’ve run out of firewood, but have the complete works of Shakespeare at your disposal – what do you do?
Read, and then, if I need to, burn the covers and some of my least loved plays.
If you had one person that you could take with you, from any period of history, other than a family member or loved one, who would it be and why?
Cleopatra – She was apparently good with men, would have plenty of stories to entertain me with, and the means to buy or build a boat.
You can take one album, one book, and one film with you; which would you choose and why?
Music: Miles Davis – Complete Works – To hear a jazz genius.
Book: Shakespeare – Complete Works – To enchant and entertain.
Film: Monty Python – I’d need something to make me laugh.
You can have an unlimited supply of chocolate, beer, or books; which do you choose?
Books…..including the How To books of chocolate and beer making.
Peter Atkins
Chemistry, Lincoln
Atheism Activist
What would the three essential possessions that you would take with you be and why?
A razor, a laptop, and a telescope. The razor to ensure that I do not have an excuse to lower my standards, the laptop because I cannot imagine life without it, and the telescope to provide something inexhaustible to look at.
How much would you miss academia?
For stimulation a great deal, for the carapace of bureaucracy, not at all. I retired last September, and working from home is like being banished to a desert island, so I know this to be true.
How could you use your years of academic experience to help you survive?
An academic life develops the life of the mind; so although my physical environment will decay, I shall have the pleasure of time to think.
You’ve run out of firewood, but have the complete works of Shakespeare at your disposal – what do you do?
Burning a book would be a short term solution to an ongoing problem, so I would sit and shiver. But if there was a real emergency then I would burn the better known plays, Hamlet, Macbeth, etc, which would force me, after the ship had blindly passed, to come to terms with the lesser known.
If you had one person that you could take with you, from any period of history, other than a family member or loved one, who would it be and why?
Aristotle. It would be good to have the company of such an enquiring mind, and a joy to try to put him right on almost everything.
You can take one album, one book, and one film with you; which would you choose and why?
The Goldberg Variations, as a source of everlasting delight, the Handbook of Mathematical Functions, to give me sustenance when my laptop battery expired, and The Life of Brian, to remind me hilariously of human folly.
You can have an unlimited supply of chocolate, beer, or books; which do you choose?
Beer presumably comes in casks, which could be fuel or used to build a raft; books could also be used as fuel and to build a shelter, but not chocolate, as it would make my teeth fall out.
Bernard O’Donoghue
English, Wadham
Contemporary poet
What would the three essential possessions that you would take with you be and why?
Three essential possessions. Do I already have a Bose CD player (for the music)? If not, that; secondly, a perpetual watch/clock – I am obsessed with the time which I find a matter of endless interest. Thirdly (this is really boring) binoculars so I could crack the night sky at last and work out the references in Chaucer. (Alternatively, I could take David Edwards, the Engineer from Wadham, who knows everything, including Astronomy).
How much would you miss academia?
I would miss students a lot – but I suppose I would miss people generally on a desert island. There would be so much to miss that I don’t think ‘academia’ (I’m not sure what it is as a whole) would be the main thing. I suppose I’d miss academia, in the sense of a group of people who between them can answer anything, like astronomy.
In what way could you use your years of academic experience to help you survive?
This is the hardest question which I left and returned to. Academic life makes you heroically self-centred and self-important, which might mean you’d put up with your own company better than most.
You’ve run out of firewood, but have the complete works of Shakespeare at your disposal – what do you do?
Shakespeare: this depends. If it is a full set in separate volumes, you start by burning Henry VI Part III and keep going until you finally have to burn King Lear. If it’s a single volume, you proceed in the same sequence, but of course you have to pull the book apart and make pretty small fires.
If you had one person that you could take with you, from any period of history, other than a family member or loved one, who would it be and why?
Favourite companion: a bit of a leading question. I might take Seamus Heaney because he has a perfect and capacious memory, he has a great and wicked sense of humour, and he is a brilliant mimic. He is also obsessed with Ireland, like I am, so we could talk about it ad nauseam.
You can take one album, one book, and one film with you; which would you choose and why?
One album: Bach cello suites (boring again), played by Pierre Fournier. One book: an illustrated handbook of Astronomy. One film: Dr Strangelove.
Marcus DuSautoy
Mathematics, Wadham
Presenter, Mind Games
What would be the three essential possessions that you would take with you and why?
Yellow legal pads and pencils: for some reason, mathematics and the colour yellow are inextricably linked for me. I’d also take an espresso machine. As the mathematician Paul Erdos once said, a mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.
It’s a tough call for the last one: My guitar or a football. I suppose I could kill an animal and make a football from its bladder or something, so perhaps I’ll go for taking my guitar.
How much would you miss academia?
The great thing about mathematics is that you can do it anywhere. But I would miss sitting around the academic campfire telling my stories to the mathematical tribe.
How could you use your years of academic experience to help you survive?
Mathematics is a very lonely pursuit. It can be a harsh place to navigate and you need determination to fight your way to a solution. The trouble is that the mathematics I do is very abstract so I would probably be useless when it comes to the practical stuff.
You’ve run out of firewood, but have the complete works of Shakespeare at your disposal – what do you do?
Lose myself in the wonderful stories and forget the cold. I loved performing Shakespeare when I was a student in Oxford so I’d probably leap around reciting King Lear to keep myself warm.
If you had one person that you could take with you, from any period of history, other than a family member or loved one, who would it be and why?
The nineteenth century mathematician and revolutionary Evariste Galois who is the protagonist of my new book Finding Moonshine. Galois invented the language for symmetry that I use every day, before being killed mysteriously in a duel at the age of 20. I would love to meet him to ask what happened… and also to talk some maths.
You can take one album, one book, and one film with you; which would you choose and why?
Wagner’s Parsifal, Herman Hesse’s The Glass Bead Game and Disney’s Mulan. Parsifal always sends shivers down my spine. I read the The Glass Bead Game when I was an undergraduate in Oxford. It describes a game where the player must combine mathematics, science, music and art which I have been trying to play ever since. I did a tour in China with the British Council a few years ago when my twin girls were three, and when I got back they wanted to know where I’d been, so I put Mulan on. The girls insisted on watching ‘China’ over and over again, and I never got tired of it.
You can have an unlimited supply of chocolate, beer, or books; which do you choose?
My immediate reaction was chocolate. But it always totally depresses me when I calculate how many books I am actually likely to read in a lifetime. Time on a desert island would be perfect for getting through piles of books. So I’d choose Books.
