A Sonnet to Science: Dr. Sam Illingworth

Andrea Macdonald, founder of ideaXme, interviews Dr Sam Illingworth, PhD Atmospheric Physics, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. Dr Illingworth is a “poet scientist” who believes that poetry is a powerful tool to communicate and explore science.

Poetry and science as parallels

Dr Illingworth has conducted extensive research into the lives and achievements – poetic and scientific of 6 fellow famous poet scientists. These findings have been published in a recent book, A Sonnet To Science. He evaluates through these 6 examples how science is communicated and advanced by poetry.

Climate change

Below, the full text interview:

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:00:06] Hello. Who are you?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:00:09] Hi. My name is Sam Illingworth, I guess Dr Sam Illingworth if we are being incredibly formal. I’m a senior lecturer in science communication at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. And what that means and I suppose what my research is about is in developing a dialogue between a variety of different audiences and in particular trying to give voice to audiences that have traditionally been underserved and underheard.

[00:00:39] So my scientific background is I have a Masters in Physics with Space Science and Technology and a PhD in Atmospheric Physics. Whilst studying, I spent a lot of time looking at using satellites and drones and aircrafts to make measurements of greenhouse gases and how they influence climate change. What my research and my work really is involved with now is in trying to give voice to non-scientists in the development of original research and in research governance and research direction, and in particular, really trying to make sure that scientists and people that work with scientists don’t think that they’re the only experts.

[00:01:29] As many, in fact, almost all of those non-scientists are also experts in their various fields. And it’s how we can work with those various publics, tapping into that expertise, tapping into their knowledge, tapping into their lived experiences to really help to drive forward innovation and also to reflect as scientists as to why we’re doing certain research and what we’re doing and how we might do it as well.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:02:01] You bring other disciplines into your area of specialization and you do it so incredibly successfully, sparking emotion, sparking interest, curiosity. Can you talk us through how you do that and what those disciplines are? 

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:02:24] So, I guess generally I have an arts-based approach to engender dialogue between different audiences and in particular the use of poetry and the use of games. 

[00:02:37] And the reason for this is that when we bring together scientists and non-scientists, we often can establish what I call hierarchies of intellect. So, even though non-scientists are experts in many facets of their day to day lives and also areas of research that we’re interested in when they’re brought together with scientists sometimes that can feel a little bit intimidated that their voices aren’t worth listening to.

[00:03:04] If we take something, for example, environmental change, it’s really important to listen to all voices, not just scientists, because in order to solve some of the environmental change issues, we’re going to need everybody to get involved. But when we bring together non-scientists and scientists that know science, they sometimes feel like, oh, is my voice really worth listening to? So, in order to level those hierarchies of intellect, one of the facilitatory tools that we use is that we write poetry together, and the reason that we do this is threefold. Firstly, it grants permission to the non-scientists because nobody can tell them that a poem is incorrect or correct. Secondly, it grants permission to the scientists to display an element of pathos that is often beaten out of them at an early age really. And then thirdly, it creates a sense of shared vulnerability as once you’ve heard a leading professor stand up and nervously recite a poem they’ve written, you realize that actually, they are fallible after all. 

[00:04:08] Using poems as a starting point for dialogue is a really powerful way to give voice to those voices that might not normally be heard and it’s proven to be an effective way of transcending cultures, transcending ages, transcending various characteristics. It’s a very effective way of finding in detail how we can engender dialogues and about what some of the limitations of communication may or may not be.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:04:45] You recently published a book where you focus on six “scientist poets”, or whichever way round you want to describe it (poet scientists). What is fascinating about the book is that you don’t just examine what they have done in the area of poetry and science and how they used poetry to communicate science. You also look at this fascinating area of how poetry can improve science. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:05:23] Yeah, of course. In my book, A Sonnet To Science, I look at six scientists from the 1800s to the modern-day and the role and influence that poetry had in the development of their research and on their lives in general. If we were to take one specific example from that, I think it’d probably be Miroslav Holub. 

Miroslav Holub was a very famous Czech immunologist and poet as well. And if we look at his poetry, it is exceptionally clinical. It is really stripped back and it mirrors a lot of the work he did and certainly his approach to science. As an immunologist, he did a lot of work looking at fatty cells and the role they played in the development of cancer. We know that in writing poetry, it enabled him to free up a part of his mind that he wouldn’t normally have been able to do, which then potentially gave him greater insight into the science he was doing.

[00:06:33] Ronald Ross who also features in the book and is the scientist who first discovered the link between malaria and mosquitoes. What was interesting is that when he captured this link, the first thing he did was write a poem about it rather than lab notes. The very first thing he did was to capture it in a poem.

[00:07:00] I think what I was trying to do with the book was to illustrate that these people lived really amazing and inspirational lives, but also that we don’t need to be pigeonholed as scientists, artists, dancers, sculptors, games designers, but rather just as human beings with infinite potential and who should be encouraged to explore multifaceted areas of research and of intrigue. I’m always reminded of the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein who has a very famous quote, which is “The limits of my language are the limits of my world.” I just think the more that we find out about other areas of research and study, the more we can push forward the boundaries of what’s possible within our own disciplines. 

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:07:56] Can you tell us about another one of the poets in the book? Ada Lovelace, because her work has directly and hugely impacted the world today. We all rely very heavily on our computers.

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:08:22] Absolutely. Ada Lovelace was an amazing figure. She was the daughter of the infamous British poet Lord Byron and her mother had quite a strained relationship with Lord Byron, shall we say. As a result of this, her mother didn’t want her to have anything to do with her father. She was really worried that Ada would turn into a degenerate poet like her father. So, she forced upon her a mathematical and scientific education, which for an early Victorian lady was pretty much unheard of. Ada had this amazing upbringing and she was incredibly intelligent. She was introduced to Charles Babbage, who many people see as the forefather of modern computing who arguably, most famously developed the Analytical Engine and the Difference Engine, which were forefathers to the modern computers that we see now.

[00:09:33] Ada corresponded with and suggested ideas to Babbage and he never really wrote anything down. He gave a talk once in Italy and a former Italian Prime Minister ended up writing it down but in French which was translated into English by Ada. When she transcribed it into English, she added a couple of notes which were actually incredibly insightful addendums to the work that Babbage had done. One of them very famously suggested a programme for the machine, a series of Bernoulli numbers and beyond that. But also, which I think is more overlooked and probably more impressive, is that she suggested feeding the computer musical notes so that it would be able to write a song. Babbage had designed a universal computer, so a computer that theoretically, if you change the software, could do an infinite number of different calculations and permutations. Her suggestion was amazing and pre-dated Alan Turing’s working hypothesis around the universal computer over 100 years later.

[00:11:11] Ada wrote musical poetry and wrote so eloquently that it was her own poetic sensibility that gave her the metaphysical and meta-analytical foresight to be able to make these deductions. In reading her poetry and just in looking at the incredible things that she accomplished in a very short amount of time, it’s amazing to see what a huge impact she’s had on modern technology and on computers as we use them today.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:11:52] In a number of your lectures, you talk of Joy Division and Bowie. One of your poems is called If Bowie Was A Scientist, I don’t know if you can recall any of that now? If so, it would be fantastic. I don’t want to put you on the spot. If not, maybe you could just talk to us about the poem?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:12:25] Of course:

If Bowie was a scientist,

He’d colonize the moon,

And build an elevator,

That would have us there by noon,

If Bowie was a scientist, 

We’d have free energy,

With Tesla as his guru,

We’d no longer be at sea.

[00:12:47] I’ve forgotten the rest! It’s been so long since I performed it. I don’t want to recite the whole thing either, as it’s kind of sad at the end. I guess a lot of my poetry looks at interdisciplinarity and for me, you know, music is a really important part of how we communicate and it’s such an important part of our lives. I think that sometimes people often say, why don’t you turn your poems into songs and it’s a very Interesting question. I do love music and consider myself to be musical but if you’re asking : “Why don’t we transform poetry into music?” It suggests that music is somehow the ultimate transcendence and ultimate evolution of poetry. Whereas poetry and spoken word is quite rightly the endpoint in its own journey, in that artistic process. I think that they’re very different. Even the written word versus spoken word sounds completely different with completely different subtexts, contexts and textures.

[00:14:09] I think there’s some people that do amazing work in using sound and then using soundscape to explore and to communicate. I think that there’s a lot of really interesting parallels. When I’ve talked about music in my poems, it’s a way of trying to draw out some of those parallels. So, for example, I wrote a poem called Unknown Pleasures, which looks at Joy Division’s very famous album of the same name. On the front of the album cover, there’s a very famous image that adorns the walls and t-shirts of many people across the world. Many people don’t know that it’s actually an image of the pulsar CP 1919, which was the first ever pulsar, or pulsating star, to be detected. Pulsating stars are these ancient dead, dying stars at the edge of our universe that are rotating many millions of times and emitting high energy across the universe which we then detect. What’s amazing is that, as I talk about in the poem, the thing with these pulsars is that they happen billions of years ago and we’re still able to detect their light and emissions, even though they’re dead. For me, there were incredible parallels with Joy Division, whose lead singer, Ian Curtis, tragically took his own life and yet whose work and life and music continue to permeate through the aether and affect many of us on a day to day level. I just thought that there was a tremendous overlap between the pulsar that adorned the front of that debut album and the life of Ian Curtis himself.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:16:10] Can you recall any of that poem?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:16:15] I don’t know. Normally, I have about 10 poems in my head. I think that when I first started writing poetry, it was very much to perform as spoken word and this was very much a one-way method of communication, which I love doing. I like performing, I like standing up on stage and reading poems. That was great but I realized that actually, I was maybe denying myself the opportunity to write poetry in a slightly different way. As in, to write poetry that could be appreciated and understood and read without my voice and without the need for me to perform.

[00:17:19] As I went on that journey and went through that development phase, which is, I guess where I see myself now. What that phase really demonstrated to me was that poetry, rather than just being this one-way method of communication could be a facilitator tool through which to engender dialogue, which is where the vast majority of my current research sits. This is what I find so enticing about the use of poetry in science communication, because, you know, you can have this one-way method of communication through spoken word, through the reading of poetry. But you can also have this incredible two-way dialogue where we’re not worried about the aesthetics of the poem, but it’s just a medium, a conduit, if you will, through which to give voice to a variety of different people.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:18:11] You lecture at a university. Do you also go into schools, or would you? With the recent activism carried out by Greta Thunberg, who’s a school child, one could argue that we should be trying to encourage and inspire kids from a very young age so that they don’t lose that sense of curiosity. 

[00:18:41] To encourage them to keep it and then take it with them throughout life. Do you work with schools and school children? 

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:18:49] Absolutely. I speak to around several thousand school children a year. I mean, I do a lot less now with schools than I used to. But a lot of my work with schools is exactly this. It’s in trying to break down the interdisciplinary barriers that tell children that they have to choose between certain career paths and they just suffer. When I was at secondary school, I was always fortunate to do well in the sciences and in maths. I was very much encouraged to do science and to do maths at A level and not encouraged so much to study the artistic side of things. But then when I was at university I did a lot of acting and playwriting and was able to continue to pursue that. What I think is important when working with school children is encouraging that natural curiosity and encouraging them to ask questions as well, certainly when you’re working with very young school children. In the U.K with primary school children, the teachers are absolutely amazing and do a great job that I would just not be able to do. What we sometimes find is that with primary school teachers, unless their specialism is in science, they haven’t studied science since they themselves were 16 or 17 years old. So sometimes, they can quite rightly feel a little underconfident, and when school children ask them questions, it’s very difficult because there’s that power dynamic between teacher and child and they’re unable to answer so sometimes they may suppress that question.

[00:20:31] What I do when going into these schools is when a child asks me a question, and I’m a doctor but don’t know the answer, which happens all of the time, I just say I don’t know, but let’s find out together and see how we can answer that curiosity. In doing that, it demonstrates to the teacher that actually, it’s alright not to have all of the answers and we should be encouraging the children and encouraging young people to keep asking questions and to keep having that curiosity.

[00:21:02] I know that myself, the reason why I’m curious is that nobody ever told me to stop asking questions. I think that’s such a powerful thing. That’s what science is really, it’s about asking questions and also realizing that science isn’t the only medium through which to ask and answer questions. A nice activity that we do when we go into schools is that we do a series of experiments, like visual experiments where we add different things together and it ends up looking good. We then discuss what we can see and ask the students to write up the experience as a poem,  demonstrating to them that there’s not a mutual exclusivity between science and poetry, but rather they’re just complementary ways to try and understand the world and the way in which we live.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:22:02] As well as being a senior science communication lecturer and poet, you’re also a climate change scientist. 

[00:22:12] We’ve now entered a period of election campaigning. An article published by BBC News yesterday asked the question: “Will climate change be one of the issues on which people vote in the UK Election 2019?”. 

[00:22:37] Do you think it will be? 

[00:22:42] That’s part one of the question. Part two is: What do you think the tipping point will be for people, the point at which the public will act on climate change? 

[00:22:59] We spoke about Greta earlier, but Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called The Tipping Point. What do you think will influence the tipping point, when will it be? 

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:23:16] To answer your first question, I think that we already know that climate change and climate catastrophe is really important to voters in the UK. There was a survey carried out the other day that revealed that over 65% of people see it as a priority. Now, with the current political situation, it looks as though the general election is going to, unfortunately, be a one agenda collection, which is a real shame. The thing about climate change is that it’s apolitical. It doesn’t differentiate between Conservatives, Greens, Liberals, Labour – it affects all of us.

[00:24:01] Actually, I think that climate change bizarrely offers us an opportunity to transcend many barriers, to forget about the incredibly tiny differences that we have between us when we consider the overwhelming similarities we have as human beings and to put aside those differences and to work together. I think we’ve already reached a tipping point. I think that there’s a need for all voices to be heard, not just as a box ticking exercise, but because through true diversity comes true innovation. I think it’s encouraging that in the UK we’re being invited to take part in these citizen’s assemblies. But I think there is an urgency that at times is missing. 

[00:25:14] I also think what’s really, really important is that people do not feel as though they should take absolute individual blame for the current state of the environment, because even though all of us could be doing more to either reduce or offset our carbon footprints, I think that the actual blame lies with national governments because of that inaction. There’s a real danger that by passing off that blame to individuals it can become so stigmatizing, so affecting, that we’re paralyzed into inaction. So, yes, we need to act, yes, there’s an urgency but people need to not have individual guilt associated with it and instead need to think about positive actions that they can take, positive steps they can do. Something that everybody can do and everybody should be doing is to write to their MP and tell them that climate change is an issue that is vital to them, is important to them and is not going away.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:26:28] Who are your strongest influences now in terms of individuals in your life?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:26:34] I’m incredibly fortunate to work in an environment where I’m surrounded by extremely intelligent, influential and generous people on a day-to-day basis. I have many sources of inspiration in my personal and professional life. 

[00:26:51]If I think of someone who has strongly influenced my work and practice in the past half-decade or so, it’d be my friend and colleague, the British poet Dan Simpson. Dan and I have done a lot of collaborative work together in bringing together scientists and poets to create explorations of the liminal spaces between science and poetry and Dan as well as being a good friend and an incredibly talented poet is also very generous.  Through working with him, I gradually began to understand that actually it’s not just scientists who have research pedigree, and it’s not just poets who have an element of creativity, but rather, it’s all of us and if we want to conduct effective interdisciplinary research and interdisciplinary explorations, then that interdisciplinary meeting of minds needs to happen at the very beginning of the project rather than at the end. That’s a huge influence that Dan has had on me and my whole research ethos has changed as a result of that for which I’m incredibly grateful. 

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:28:22] Aside from Dan, maybe during your younger years when you were finding out about what you wanted to do, did you make any rich connections with people who changed the course of your life? Were there any individuals that helped you personally or professionally or a combination of the two that contributed in propelling you forward?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:28:48] After I finished my PhD, I was fortunate to get a scholarship from the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation to go and live and work in Japan for two years. It was an amazing opportunity that afforded me the time, space and finance to do whatever I wanted as long as it had a link with Japan. 

[00:29:08] I was fascinated at this point in my life at the links between science and theatre and how theatre could potentially be used as a way to effectively communicate science. Whilst, I was there I did a work placement at a theatre under the tutelage of a Japanese director, Yukio Ninagawa who is sadly no longer with us. He was one of, if not the leading light in modern Japanese theatre. I always remember him as this incredibly talented, incredibly driven man, yet when I went to the theatre he’d let me watch all the rehearsals and talk to him about his methods. On the last day there he let me come and sit next to him on his director’s chair, and he gave me an incredible gift. He gave me a collection of one of his works and wrote a note in front of it in Japanese and he’d given me a name.

[00:30:25] In Japanese words and in Kanji various symbols can be used to represent phonetic sounds. So, my name in Japanese would be Samu but you can use a variety of different Kanjis. Giving somebody a name is a pretty huge honour in any culture, but he’d picked these two letters and created these two characters that literally translated to ‘Shakespeare’s Dream,’ which was amazing.

[00:31:12] It’s one of the most generous gifts I think I’ve ever been given.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:31:16] Out of everybody that you could meet in the world that you haven’t met so far. Who would you most like to meet and what question would you like to ask that person?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:31:34] This is such a difficult question to answer because there are so many people who inspire me on a daily basis.

[00:31:45] If I was to think genuinely about this, someone who’s a huge inspiration to me and it’s such an obvious answer, but it’s Barack Obama. Because he has such humility and grace in the way that he goes about speaking about things. The question I’d like to ask him is how do you project such humility when you yourself are under such personal attack? That would be a really valuable lesson to learn from him.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:32:27] How do people buy your book? How do people get a hold of you? What’s the name of your Website? 

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:32:37] My website is www.samillingworth.com. From the website, you can access my blog, The Poetry of Science, where each week I read a piece of scientific research and communicate its findings through poetry. My podcast is also called The Poetry of Science, which goes into a slightly deeper dive of the poetry and science in question. You can purchase my book, A Sonnet To Science, via all leading retailers online and instore and you can also find details about it on my website. If you would like to get in contact with me, I am an avid tweeter and my Twitter handle is @samillingworth.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:33:21] One final question before you go. Ada Lovelace wanted a poem called The Rainbow on her grave. Her wish wasn’t granted, it didn’t go on her grave, but was later put on a monument dedicated to her. What poem would you like on your grave?

Dr Sam Illingworth, Science Communication Senior Lecturer [00:33:39] There’s a poem that I do remember that I love and it’s written by Rebecca Elson, who’s the sixth scientist that features in my book. She was an incredible poet and an astronomer. I think she did an amazing job in this poem of capturing what it meant to be a scientist:

We astronomers are nomads,

Merchants, circus people,

All the earth our tent.

We are industrious.

We breed enthusiasms,

Honour our responsibility to awe.

But the universe has moved a long way off.

Sometimes, I confess,

Starlight seems too sharp,

And like the moon

I bend my face to the ground,

To the small patch where each foot falls,

Before it falls,

And I forget to ask questions,

And only count things.

Andrea Macdonald, founder ideaXme [00:34:51] Dr Sam Illingworth. Thank you so much for your time. It’s been an absolute pleasure. 

Credit: Andrea Macdonald interview audio and text.

If you liked this interview, be sure to check out our interview on using art and science to fight climate change!

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