OU on the BBC: The Cosmos: A Beginner's Guide - Meet your space guides

The Open University Adam Hart-Davis

Adam is an award-winning presenter of programmes as wide-ranging as Tomorrow’s World; What the Ancients Did For Us; Science Shack; Local Heroes; Stardate; and How London was Built.

A freelance photographer and writer with a regular column in the Radio Times, Adam has authored about 24 books, including: World’s Weirdest ‘True’ Ghost Stories; Thunder, Flush, & Thomas Crapper (an encyc-loo-pedia); Amazing Math Puzzles; and What the Ancients Did For Us. His latest books are Taking the Piss, and Just Another Day. He also wrote articles for the Oxford Companion to the Body on “Burp”, “Defecate”, and “Farting”.

Adam’s honours include: Companion of the Institution of Lighting Engineers, Honorary Member of the British Toilet Association, Honorary Fellow of the Society of Dyers and Colourists, patron of a dozen charitable organizations, twelve honorary doctorates, the Horace Hockley Award from the Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators, a Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Sir Henry Royce Memorial Medal from the Institute of Incorporated Engineers, and the 1999 Gerald Frewer memorial trophy of the Council of Engineering Designers.

The Open University Janet Sumner

Adam and Janet have presented together on several programmes, including Science Shack and more recently Stardate: Mysteries of Venus.

Janet is a qualified geologist and vulcanologist, a broadcast executive and lecturer with the OU and also likes a bit of “space and time travel”.

She graduated in Geology from Sheffield University in 1987 and gained a PhD in Vulcanology from Kiel University in 1994. For the last 10 years she has been researching explosive volcanic eruptions on earth and on other planets in our solar system. She’s not afraid to get her hands wet, or her fingers burnt, in the process – you’ll usually find her scrambling about, on, or inside active volcanoes such as Stromboli or Etna, or even fire-walking on the lava flows of Hawaii.

The results of her research have appeared in many international scientific journals. Most of her work involves field research but it also takes in lab experiments and computational fluid dynamics (sometimes using buckets of golden syrup and even cream eggs!)

Her taste for adventure embraces several extreme sports (skydiving, paragliding, pot holing and scuba diving) but free climbing is her sport of choice as the abseiling is useful for getting down into volcanoes.

She has travelled widely and circumnavigated the globe twice, most recently on a German science and media ship, where she was crew member, scientific reporter and underwater camera and stills photographer.

Janet has also presented on BBC One Nature programmes, including the British Isles: A Natural History series with Alan Titchmarsh. In 2007 she will present on Alan's follow-up series Nature of Britain.

The Open University Maggie Aderin

Dr Maggie Aderin teams up with Adam Hart-Davis and Janet Sumner for this series.

Maggie’s scientific career to date has involved making new, specially-designed measuring instruments for both industrial and academic use. These range in size from hand-held land mine detectors to a satellite sub-system to monitor wind speeds in the Earth’s atmosphere and so improve our knowledge of climate change.

Maggie currently works at Astrium Limited, in Portsmouth, where she manages a multi-disciplinary team making a sub-system for the James Webb Space Telescope, (a joint ESA/NASA venture due to replace the Hubble space telescope in 2013).

She enjoys making science more accessible to the public and has received a fellowship from the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) to enable her to do more public engagement with science events through UCL.

She has also set up her own company, Science Innovation Ltd, which she runs in her spare time. Through her company Maggie conducts activities to help people engage with science, including “Tours of the Universe”, a scheme that engages school children and adults in the wonders of space.

First broadcast: Tuesday 7 Aug 2007 on BBC TWO

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