PM’s Innovation Prize for childhood cancer drug
53:58 Share

So what I'm looking at is a collection of beautiful stones and they're sea colours, deep blues, turquoise and green. They're mesmerising. Yeah, they are. That's why you get the bugs, eh? Have I caught it? Oh, you'll get it, yeah. When you dig one out, you will, eh? Yeah, like I'm going to find it, Opal. MUSIC

But she did. The luck of the science show. Jonica Newby, my partner, down a mine, getting lucky. And then asking why Australia has most of the world's opals. And later in the science show, the Bragg Prizes for science writing and launch of the best science writing book. Now, Jonica.

Regular Science Show listeners will know that I recently visited the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge, part of an investigation into the opalised monotreme fossils, which revealed a whole new age of egg-laying mammals, including our favourite new ancient monotreme, the Echidnopus. But while I was there, I became a bit obsessed by the mysteries of opal itself.

Why are opals so good at making fossils? In fact, what even is precious opal? Why is Australia virtually the only place that has it? And does that have something to do with the world the ancient monotremes lived in?

So this week, a special bonus story from Lightning Ridge all about opal. And we begin with paleontologist Jenny Brammel, who is showing us more of her favourite opal fossils from the fabulous collection at the Australian Opal Centre.

This piece is another favourite of mine. This is a backbone from a dinosaur that has a lump on one side that doesn't belong there. So this is a paleopathological feature. This dinosaur would have had either an injury or some sort of medical problem that probably gave it quite a painful existence.

Who'd have thought that your sore back would get preserved as a jewel? I know, who'd have thought? You probably wouldn't trade for immortality, but some people might if they could. Yeah. Now this little bone here is actually a monotreme backbone. We have quite a number of monotreme post-cranial bones. So they're the bones from the body rather than the head of the animal. These are under study at the moment. And this is one that is just on display at the moment. Oh, that's quite an extraordinary one.

down the bottom. Is that Opal Wood? So that one is terrific. It's from Caroit in Queensland and

So we're looking at a sort of a rich chocolatey brown piece of wood where the brown material is ironstone that's replaced chemically the original wood. And then offset against that are all of these tiny streaks of green and lilac and blue, which are the precious opal that had filled the voids within the shrinkage cracks. So yeah, it's another favourite. Really beautiful.

You seem to love these fossils. Have you got opal fever? Yeah, I do a bit. So I came here first in the 1990s, early 1990s as a uni postgrad student looking for opalised mammal fossils specifically. I can't say I've found many opalised mammal fossils because they are unimaginably rare.

But I've been searching for 30 years now and coming here and being invited underground by miners to look for fossils meant that I had the rare privilege of seeing opal sparkling from the walls of a particular mine. And I didn't know at the time how rare it is to even see that.

But that night, as I went back to camp and shut my eyes as I lay down in my tent, I just saw the colour of opal on the inside of my eyelids. And that was it. I was gone. So I am an opal tragic. I love it. And I think if you see somebody with opal fever looking at or holding a piece of opal, you can see that the whole world has disappeared for them and that their eyes and their mind have gone into the opal.

So there's a real connection. I actually think there's some really interesting neurochemical things happening there. I really do think that there's something that happens neurologically when you love opal and you look at it that is really good for you. Opal really isn't like other gems. It ripples and it dances, shifts its colours and entrances.

It's our national gemstone. 95% of the world's precious opal comes from around the Great Artesian Basin in Central Australia. And yet...

Believe it or not, scientists didn't really understand how it forms until 2014, when the mystery was solved by a Frenchman. My name is Patrice Ray. I am a professor of geology at the University of Sydney. Patrice became obsessed with Australia as a boy when he saw a French TV show about opal mining in Coober Pedy. And I do remember thinking, oh,

Those people, you know, they dig a backyard and even if they don't find any gemstones, they end up with this beautiful underground house and some of them have swimming pool. And I thought this is a great way to make a living. This is a 10-year-old's dream, eh? Exactly. In 1995, the kid's dream partly came true. He moved to Australia and ultimately the geology department of Sydney University, whereupon he discovered how

little we really knew scientifically about opal formation. I was not only surprised, but I was embarrassed. I mean, we know so much about gold and uranium and copper and diamonds, but we don't know how it forms. Why so much opal in Australia and not the rest of the world? I mean, I could not believe it. And I thought this is too good to miss.

So he took on the challenge, which you'd think should be easy. Opal is made of silica, which is common. Sand is silica. Quartz is silica. They're everywhere. So why not opal?

But it took Patrice 10 long years until finally he cracked it, the geological recipe for opal. And the biggest clue came from unexpectedly far away, Mars. And then I started to read about the discovery of opaline silica on Mars. Yep, you heard it. Opal was discovered on Mars. So what did Mars and ancient Central Australia have in common?

Ingredient one, basalt. Basalt is volcanoes. Yeah, exactly. Volcanic basalt is full of the silica you need for opal. Ingredient two, acid. On Mars, the weathering occurs on the very acidic condition, condition that does not exist on Earth because the presence of limestone buffers that acidity. And then I think this is where the pin dropped. There was no limestone in the rock making the Great Artesian Basin.

To explain, limestone is like nature's antacid. You can't have acidic conditions if there's limestone around. But if Central Australia lacks limestone, it's one of the few places on Earth that can mimic the acidic conditions on Mars. So the question was, OK, how do acid conditions form on Earth?

And in most of the cases, the acidity is released through the oxidation of a mineral called pyrite. And it turns out that the pyrite is the product of biology. There was a particular type of bacteria. And what those bacteria do is to release, or to poo, if you prefer, pyrite.

And where do you find lots of anaerobic bacteria to poo pyrite? At the bottom of swampy bodies of water.

And there was just one time and one place on Earth where that unique combination of volcanoes, swamps and no limestone came together. Central Australia, beginning 135 million years ago. At that time, Australia is still part of Gondwana. 135 million years ago, Australia detaches from the rest of Gondwana. It is still attached with Antarctica.

And Australia and Antarctica move eastward. Heading east, the continent moves over a subduction zone, sucking central Australia down into a bowl shape, creating an inland sea. And on the east side, we have these massive volcanoes delivering lavas and volcanic ashes into central Australia.

The rivers, instead of flowing out to the edges of the continent, flow inland toward the sea, forming vast deltas of shallow lakes and muddy swamps. So it's very smelly, it's very muddy, it's very cold. Finally, Australia was a lot closer to the South Pole then. The seas were too cold for reefs to grow, hence no limestone.

Volcanoes plus acidic conditions in the absence of limestone equals opal. Not quite yet. So let's say that I'm Echidnopus. I'm living my best life back in the Cretaceous.

And I fall into a river and I drown. How do I become a fossil, a fossil opal? All right. So you are transported first through your river. You are transported into muddy layers. And the first thing that happens is that those bacterias, they will eat all the flesh. And through these anaerobic bacteria activities around the bones, we're going to deposit a lot of pyrites.

That fossilisation initially did not involve silica, it did not involve opal, it involved carbonates. My personal journey to gemstone status occurs in two phases. First, my bones fossilise as common carbonate.

Then, from about 97 million years ago, the inland sea dries up. Fresh rain seeps through the rocks into my anoxic bones, bringing oxygen, which reacts with the pyrite to make acid, which dissolves the carbonate and releases the silica as a gel, seeping through any cracks in the rocks.

And molecule by molecule, the carbonate is replaced by silica. And if the pH is in the right balance, what you deposit are precious opal. And you transform these dull carbonate fossils into a beautiful gemstone fossil. It does blow my mind.

that it was such a rare circumstance and such a rare landscape that allowed these gemstone monitoring fossils to come to us today. It is just impossible. They should not be there. I wonder what would happen if Australia was only 10 degrees north. I wonder what would happen if we did not have that subduction zone. I wonder what would happen if the conditions were not right for those bacteria to form.

I mean, it's just simply impossible, this gemstone to exist. And yet it does. And the fact that we have these beautiful fossils add to the story. I mean, it's just amazing. It is amazing. A unique confluence of landscape and time that alchemized living creatures into some of the most exquisite jewels on the planet.

They should be celebrated, part of our national heritage. And that's exactly why Jenny Bramall, Director of the Australian Opal Centre, has been working so hard behind the scenes to bring some exciting news. After more than 25 years of planning, in 2025 the Centre's collection will finally be housed in a grand new architecturally designed museum befitting its significance.

Yeah, we're very excited about this. So what we're looking at here is an architect's rendering of what the future new Australian Opal Centre will look like. It's going to be quite incredible. You will enter the building through a short underground tunnel and you'll emerge into a space that's about twice as big as you can tell from the outside. So it's about 65 metres long by 30 metres wide and

And right across that 30 metre span are big trusses and in between the trusses are skylights. So when you walk in through the end of the building, you'll see gorgeous filtered light coming down from the skylights across a massive exhibition space. What we can see in this illustration is the malcafs, which are the ventilation chimneys that allow this building to breathe passively. But they actually look like the kind of tassels

towers that you find in medieval tiny hilltop towns around, say, Tuscany, which I've been to, or parts of the Middle East. That's a really good observation because these are based on a Middle Eastern technology that's been used for hundreds, if not thousands of years, that have kept

that are in very hot, arid environments cool through the years. What made you decide to go with a bold architectural vision and what is your vision for this place? The original committee right from the beginning set out to build something that would elevate Australian opal. So Australian opal is internationally recognised as an incredible natural treasure and

And here in its site of production, we're so casual about it. That's one of the things that we love about living here and being here. We have a laugh, we work hard, we play hard, but we're actually treating this incredible gemstone as if it were a sheep's fleece. It is actually so rare and special. So people wanted to elevate it by creating a home for it that acts as a pedestal to promote it.

and put it onto a truly global and international quality sort of stage. So from the beginning, there was a concept to get excellent architects and to deliver a building that was significant as well as its content.

In a future stage, we're going to actually build an underground Gondwanan garden. So we're going to have a garden within this building that is planted with perhaps wallamai pines, certainly tree ferns and ferns. This is something that people are very excited about. And once stage one is up and running, this is what we'll be fundraising for moving forward, our beautiful Gondwanan garden.

Well, it must have been incredible after the 25 years of planning to finally see that hole be dug and the foundations about to be laid. Absolutely. Is there anything else like this in the world? In terms of a centre that is cultural and scientific, completely dedicated to a gemstone and a gemstone fossil, absolutely not. This is globally unique. Yeah.

So it's going to be up there on the sort of level with much larger institutions, with generalized collections like

like the Smithsonian, for example. Or on a specialist level, places like the Gemological Institute of America have a museum with a gemstone collection. But this is quite unique in the sense of the architectural significance, the incredible scientific and cultural significance of the content, and then the fact that it is being completely built of place. When will people be able to walk in the door?

Look, at this stage, we're looking at probably late first quarter, early second quarter of 2025. So it's very soon. At the moment, we're getting into the stage of thinking about things like this incredible fossil collection we have, which items go on display first?

We can't have it all out at once. So what stories do we tell when the doors open? And what do we keep? Because there's lifetimes, multiple lifetimes of temporary exhibitions and changing exhibitions that we can offer over time. So yeah, it's an exciting time at the moment. It is. Can I put in a vote for Wee Warasaurus? Sure. Okay. Wee Warasaurus will be in there when the door opens. Yeah.

Dr. Jonathan Newby, my partner with paleontologist Jenny Brammel at Lightning Ridge and the Opal Centre. The Bragg Prizes for Science Writing are named after Lawrence Bragg, born in Adelaide and the youngest person ever to win a Scientific Nobel Prize.

They were presented this year at the University of New South Wales and combined with the launch of this year's book, Best Australian Science Writing. Here are the two editors, Jackson Ryan and First, Carl Smith. Exceptional science storytelling comes in many different forms and we were blown away in the hundreds of submissions that we received for this year's Best Australian Science Writing anthology, how different the styles and forms were. We had everything from news pieces through to features,

braided essays through to poetry, and even in what I think is a first for the Best Australian Science Writing, a libretto. So there is a libretto in this edition, which tells the story of the universe and dances us through it. It's beautiful. And it's so wonderful to see all those different forms represented in this year's edition. We had a few different guiding lights in our selection.

The first for us was I think what really stands out with most storytelling. It's trying to find stories that really transport us, that take us out of ourselves and into another world, into someone else's perspective. And the first two stories in this edition really throw you right into the action. The first one takes you into the forests of Tasmania to a slime mold house. The next has you racing across the sand in the Solomon Isles chasing turtles.

The other thing that we looked for was really human stories in this very human pursuit. Science is one of the best tools we have to understand our world and understanding the people who work there and their motivations, why they do it, is a really vital part of science writing.

We also looked for just cracking storytelling and really interesting ideas and new lines of inquiry. And so there's plenty of pieces in here that just open your eyes to a whole field of research that you wouldn't normally encounter. For example, the latest in green chemistry told through an umbrella, an exploded sonnet,

There's medical mysteries in there and really heartbreaking stories of medical diagnoses as well. We also picked stories that shone a light in different parts of science and helped us understand where things can be better. Everything from how we might structure health funding through to science policy and how we incorporate Indigenous and First Peoples knowledge.

through to the dark underside of artificial intelligence. And so combined, this paints a really beautiful picture of a flourishing community of science writers. And I'm so thrilled to see so many of you here, the people who fill these pages, here to celebrate this book and 14 editions of the Best Australian Science Writing. I think it's wonderful. And I think the vibrancy of these stories really leaves off the page. And we can't wait for you to open it up and take it home with you.

Now, I know how vibrant and wonderful this community is. We're both part of the Science Journalists Association, and we know how hard everyone in this edition and beyond works to bring stories of science to the public like these.

and that vibrancy really leaked off the page in these 30-odd stories. I think we shall be really proud of what we've been doing as a community of science writers here in Australia. As we say in the introduction in this book, I think the best thing you can do to support science writing and science journalism is to engage with it, to read it, and to share it with people. We're really thrilled that we'll get to share some cracking science stories with you tonight by introducing you to the runners-up and

and also the winner of the Bragg Prize. And I'll hand over to Jackson for a few words, and he will make the announcements. Thank you very much, Carl. As you heard, I'm the president of the Science Journalists Association, and I know that the word president is kind of dirty right now. I want to make it clear I won that election fair and square, all right? Look, first and foremost, I actually just want to thank Carl, my co-editor, and I sprung this on him. He didn't know I was going to do this, but...

I met Carl at the Best Australian Science Writing launch in 2019. He came up and said hello to me. I think we've been best buds/enemies ever since. And thanks at Musk Go to UNSW Press and New South Publishing. They publish this book year after year. I think it's 14 years now. There's going to be a 15th. I hope there's 250. Hopefully the planet still exists at that point. But in a divisive and very polarised media environment, there's really an urgent need for science writing. There's an urgent need for science journalists.

Because we provide a bulwark against misinformation and disinformation. And that's not all. Like science journalism really is and should be the shining example for nuanced and rich and objective reporting in general. Science journalism can be that. Science writing, of course, is under that same umbrella. It can be that shining example. And I think it has the ability to hold power to account in a way that other forms of journalism sometimes cannot do.

So if science writing is a candle in the dark, why aren't we supporting that? Why aren't we letting that candle breathe? We need to give it some oxygen because science writing is actually really underfunded and underappreciated. To that end, actually, the Science Journalists Association is doing everything we can to support science writing and science journalism in this country.

We've given out over $23,000 in funding for independent reporting grants, travel grants, and just this month we announced that we will be opening up a science journalism residency program. First of its kind in the country. First of its kind at the University of Queensland. That's sponsored by the Copyright Agency's Cultural Fund, so thank you so much to those guys.

That's a three-month to four-month residency where a science journalist can embed with researchers. And we see that as a way to lift up not just science journalists and science writers, but to lift up Australian science as a whole. And I don't need to belabor the point about what's going on overseas, but I think right now we need to do that. Put the soapbox away. Soapbox, get off the soapbox now and do the important stuff, which is announcing the UNSW Press Bragg Prize for this year. But first, I will start with the two runners-up.

So our first runner up this year is Deani Lewis for a transportive and urgent story titled, "Humanity's oldest art is flaking away, can scientists save it?" And that details kevar in Indonesia, tens of thousands of years old, and the race against time to preserve those ancient sites. Give a big congratulations to Deani Lewis. We have another runner up, and that runner up is Amanda Niehaus for her essay, "Dog People," which is a moving, moving essay about relationships, about grief,

and about our connection with our furry best friends. Please give it up for Amanda. Jack Ryan with Carl Smith. And now the editors talk to those recognised on the panel. And here's a glimpse.

First, I'm going to go to Diani. Diani's story about protecting cave art, she's a fantastic science journalist and science writer, and I'm thrilled that she was able to win the runner-up prize. I just want to start, Diani, can you give us a little bit of background about what is this story and how did it come about? So I started writing about human origins and paleoanthropology in

For Cosmos, I think it was. They wanted an explainer about what are all of these different early humans that existed in the world, where did they travel and that sort of thing. And I think over the last two decades, there's been an incredible amount of research and discovery happening in island Southeast Asia. There was the Hobbit discovered on the island of Flores in Indonesia. There was another...

homo luzonensis in the Philippines and there's just a wealth of information but I think it's often overlooked because there's so much interesting stuff still going on in Europe, on the Neanderthals and in Africa and everything. So I think for a long time

I've really wanted to do a more substantial piece about the migrations. And of course, you know, being in Australia, it was through these islands that the first Australians arrived on our continent. And it was through those news pieces that I discovered talking to researchers that there was this bigger story about cave art in Indonesia that was incredibly old and yet flaking off the walls of the caves. And yeah, it was...

just for me, a perfect story that I wanted to dig into. But also I thought it was really important to go there, particularly because archaeology and paleoanthropology have a real reputation for parachute science of, you know, wealthy nations and wealthy scientists sort of parachuting in

grabbing up all of their really interesting discoveries, going back to America or England and publishing them to much acclaim. So I was really excited about going to Indonesia and actually speaking with some of the archaeologists who are on the ground. And one of those in particular, Rustam Libi, he day in, day out goes into these limestone caves and

and catalogues them. He's catalogued more than 650 so far. About 65% of those have cave art in them. And there are just many, many more to discover. And these artworks are the oldest

storytelling scene in the world and also much older than some of these really incredible works of art that were discovered in the Lascaux Cave in France, for example, that people go out of their way to go to. And this is on our doorstep and a lot of people just don't even know it's there. So yeah, it's incredible. But actually, I think we should bring Amanda in, Carla, and maybe start with explaining your story as well, Amanda, how it came about, why you decided to write it.

a story like this and why now? So often when I start something like this, I just have an idea, like I have a gut feeling that things are connected in a way that I don't quite know yet. And so in this piece, it's a bit about the evolution of dogs.

long ago human history. It's a bit about my chihuahuas and my experience as a chihuahua owner. And it's also a bit about the loss of my dad a couple years ago, which is something that wove itself in near the end.

Reading this piece, we were both really affected by dog people. It's a beautiful piece of science storytelling. And what really struck me when I read it was how similar it was in form and structure to H.S. Bohawk by Helen MacDonald. A very kind of braided novel where you've got these different themes that are very similar to yours. And I love seeing the similarities to that style of writing in what you put together. How do you actually begin that journey?

Oh my God, it's so painful. It is not. It is not the kind of essay that you jump into if you don't feel like this internal compulsion to do it. I know that some essayists who work in this form will write out the braids separately. So create maybe three separate narratives, each one with its story arc.

and then weave them together. And that doesn't work for me. I do it much more complicatedly, where I just start writing and then

at some point it occurs to me that I need to move to the next topic. Yeah, maybe like intuition, a special kind of alchemy here as well that you just have to follow. Because on the page, if you're very objective, you'll go from, you know, dog evolution to my dad's dying of cancer in like a couple of words. Yeah, I mean, you speak about the braided essay, of course, and one of the sections in your piece talks about sort of experiments with the domestication of foxes, right? I think...

I think what's interesting is it actually started with the science rather than the personal. Most of us have an idea of how dogs were domesticated. You know, they started hanging around with humans at some point in history. But it was actually, I started looking at the data around this and the stories just were a lot more interesting than I thought they were going to be. And it reminded me of all of those

prehistoric stories from when you're a kid when there's mammoths on the steps and dire wolves and there's people trying to make

make fire and survive. And it's just really cool. And so for me, it was about exploring the different sciences around this, including the fact that we will never actually know how those ancient humans domesticated the wolves and made them into dogs.

The best we can guess is some of these modern-day experiments, like the one that Jackson was just talking about, with these foxes in Russia where they tried to recreate the experiment of domestication

just to see what would happen. And it came out with all of these amazing results, including foxes that would just behave and even start to look like some of the characteristics of dogs. So you had these foxes developing characteristics over the generations, wagging their tail when they saw the person moving towards them, which is something you never would imagine that a fox would do. And yet...

as part of the process of domestication, they were signaling to the humans how excited they were to be part of their team. And I think like over 12 generations or something, it went up to almost 70% of these foxes learning to wag their tail and also being perceived by the humans as cuter in how they kind of acted. Just love this idea. Cute little foxes wagging their tail, looking up at you with big eyes. I don't think I ever realized that foxes didn't wag their tails now that I think about it. Two runners up. Well, Carl, Jack, who was the winner?

And the winner is Cameron Stewart. Unfortunately for Cameron, and it is pretty unfortunate, he's in the US right now covering the election. So he sent in this short video for us instead. Hi, I'm Cameron Stewart. I wanted to tell you a little bit more about the background to my story, The Heroes Who Zero, about the fight against children's cancer. I was tipped off some years ago by a former science journalist who I've known for many years,

telling me that the survival rate for children's cancer was remarkable. In the 50s and 60s, the scourge of childhood cancer was almost a death sentence for a young kid. Today, the survival rate in Australia is 84%. The story was an incredible one, really, because

In the early 1970s, a small group of parents whose children had been diagnosed with cancer got together and started to raise funds to try and create a laboratory and a place in Australia where the scourge of disease could be better understood and hopefully tackled. It was not just a story of science and progress and laboratories and test tubes. It was a very human story of

the grit and determination of these poor families, you know, with the most heartbreaking news possible. Some of it was very difficult to report. For me, it felt like parents who'd lost their children through cancer because, of course, not all childhood cancers are curable at this point. I'd also had the incredibly uplifting experience of speaking to parents whose children came through and survived and in no small part survived.

due to the Cancer Institute and the work of Michelle Haber and her team. This is an amazing human achievement that's happened in Australia. I wanted to try and tell it in a humane way that was accessible to everyone. I hope you enjoyed it. Cameron Stewart, who writes for The Weekend Australian and is winner of the Bragg Prize this year.

And it's all in the best Australian science writing book. New South Press is the publisher. And that story about kids and cancer leads me to another prize from the PM's Awards. This is the prize for innovation won by the company Cytopia. Andrew Wilkes and Dr Christopher Burns, what's the secret of your success? The secret of my success is patience, obviously. I've been at this for nearly 35 years. And I think the secret is the company you keep going.

And I've been extremely lucky with all of my academic career and, of course, with my commercial side to come across real domain experts who are genuinely terrific at the things that they do. And I just bob along for the ride, I think, is how it goes. And the company you keep, of course, in the commercial sense, the cost of developing drugs is just enormous, isn't it? How do you get past that hurdle?

Well, that is a challenge in drug development. We were very fortunate to have good backers here at Cytopia when the company first started, when Andrew founded the company in the late 90s. We had what was called a pool development fund, if you remember that device, some years ago, put money into the company and supported the company until we listed on the ASX. And that helped us get through the discovery phase of what has become now a drug that

which acquired ultimately for just under $2 billion, $1.9 billion, and is now being marketed and potentially will be a billion-dollar drug. Doing what? So our drug treats rare bone cancer called myelofibrosis, and it does that by inhibiting a class of enzymes that Andrew discovered. Andrew's sitting right next to me here.

And that enzyme's overactive and mutated in this particular cancer. And so what was the secret? What was the innovation part of what you did? The innovation was to actually create, through invention, a molecule that was an excellent inhibitor of that protein. This is what we do for a living, which is to make small molecules that interact with normal processes. And some of them...

as with this one, work out to be incredibly therapeutic. The innovation really is converting basic knowledge into a useful and applicable molecule or device. And you're interfering with an enzyme and you've got to attack the shape of the creature. That's correct. And in fact, that's now how we actually carry out these drug discovery programs. And machine learning is now part of the process.

And we humans, medicinal chemists like my colleague here, have a repertoire of sort of human algorithms that they use to create these molecules. And we're now thinking, well, of course, machine learning as a way to uncover new algorithms and new ways to approach these things. That's the new frontier. So this is very much a sort of moving feast about how we embrace technology to sort of develop these new therapeutic. These are golden times for being in the drug discovery space. There are so many new ways to approach the problem.

Certainly is. I remember having the tremendous pleasure of interviewing the Nobel Prize winner Frances Arnold. She got the prize on her own for predicting what shape proteins will evolve to, what's the next villain in the piece, or how in fact you attack using the shape as you've done what's coming up.

Yeah, so we've used structural biology and the visualisation of the shape of the molecule along the way. That's very much part of the process that we went through. And I call these guys space cadets doing rocket science. They're amazing individuals who understand all of those shapes around the molecule. Yes, but when you're working with business people, explaining the science of this sort of innovation...

Is that a hurdle for you or do most people in business where you are understand such things quite readily? I think there's a reasonably good understanding of the drug development process. You know, once you have a drug and you have to work through a process of testing it in phase one, phase two, phase three clinical trials, the investment community and the investors we work with generally understand that. I think when you go back before that and you're talking about the design of a molecule and

and the tests and the processes that you go through. I think that's a little bit harder to explain because that is deeper science. Where the eureka moment may occur. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, that's really quite tricky to communicate, I think. It is an interesting and very fine line. I mean, this is really complicated stuff.

And you can actually trivialize what you do. So finding that fine line of enough information to get them convinced that you know what you're doing, but not too much that becomes bewildering as an investment proposition.

So it's a real skill. Chris has had to learn that, particularly now as a CEO of an ASX company. I'm slightly more indulged because we only do private stuff, but it is a real gift, I think. We're at the Shinedome in the Academy of Science and there's your audience waiting for you outside. Final question. What sort of difference will this Prime Minister's Prize make for you? I already feel slightly more opinionated than I was yesterday, I think. LAUGHTER

Like the Nobel Prize, you're able now to speak on any field. Absolutely. I'm an expert on everything I care to make mention of. It's a wonderful thing. The sense of recognition for me was really gratifying. But I'm motivated enough to continue to do the thing that I love doing, the science around drug discovery. I've met some of the patients that benefit from this now. So this is a real passion. Many of them are there?

Well, there's maybe 80,000 on the planet, I think. 100,000? 100,000, yeah. It's a rare cancer. No, it's about 100,000, I think. You know, we've heard really heartwarming stories about patients on the trial, on taking the drug, and they've gone from being bedridden and really having a fairly miserable existence to actually out of bed, back enjoying life. And, you know, that's incredibly rewarding, and particularly as patients not only living

and more enjoyable life. They're living for longer now as a consequence of taking the drug we invented. And I did want to just comment though, you know, Andrew made the point about how things change. For me, it reinforces the process of innovation, of drug discovery and development. And for Australia, it's about

We do great early-stage research, and it's about being able to translate that with a fantastic group of scientists into something that actually means something. That, to me, is a great acknowledgement through this award, and we're hoping to do it again. Dr Christopher Burns and Andrew Wilkes of Cytopia. And so, back to the best science writing book. It contains both a libretto, Origins by Jenny Graves and Lee Hay, but also a poem about Cecilia Payne by Alicia Sometimes, whom I've yet to meet...

But here's our science show regular, Zofia, with her take on the same person. Out on you, fond instructor, perverter of nature's laws, explaining cause by effect, confounding effect with cause. I could say a thousand things about you, but I will desist, for you are a charming woman, but you are not a scientist. That was Cecilia Payne-Gaboshkin from 1915.

At 16 years old, she was frustrated. Her school didn't support her dream of being a scientist, and she had to teach herself botany from a textbook she won in a competition. She was getting fed up with teachers who couldn't keep up with her, and a society that wanted her to just get married and shut up. As a final blow, shortly before the end of that same year, Cecilia was expelled.

But just ten years later, she would discover what the universe is made of. By studying grainy photographic plates captured from a telescope, Cecilia was able to figure out that the main element in stars is hydrogen. The theory at the time was that stars were essentially the same elemental composition as the Earth, just really, really hot.

She went on to work on variable stars, making over two million measurements along with her husband Sergei Gaboshkin, as well as Magellanic clouds and other stellar phenomena. With her thesis Stellar Atmospheres, she became the first Doctor of Astronomy at Harvard and went on to become a Professor of Astronomy and chair the department.

I began Donovan Moore's biography, What Stars Are Made Of, under the impression that I knew the broad strokes of the story. Payne was ruthlessly hardworking and terminally underappreciated, and she got the rug pulled out from under her when credit for her greatest discovery was stolen by a male colleague. What I learned was that Cecilia Payne-Gbushkin was far more than this one injustice.

She led a fascinating life in a time of great change across two continents. She believed that art and science best worked together and would weave lecture tapestries of literature and astronomy. Speaking of the stars, she considered her friends.

She was inspired by music and in high school was taught by the composer Gustav Holst and was among the first to hear his most famous work, The Planets. A strong thread throughout the book is of the many mentors and teachers Cecilia Payne-Kaboshkin encountered. She began her studies at Cambridge University, a degree she technically wasn't able to receive due to her gender.

In her first year, she was tutored by Agnes Arbour, the first woman botanist member of the Royal Society, who produced more than 50 papers on the subject when a woman couldn't even take out books from the university library without a man. Her early years and education read like a mystery novel, the skills that made her a determined researcher scattered like clues. As she wrote later,

I made up my mind to do research and was seized with panic at the thought that everything might be found out before I was old enough to begin. Zofia Witkowski-Blake on Cecilia Payne, the first woman to be chair of physics at Harvard. And our final high-achieving woman is one of our past top five scientists feeding the world, Dr Rebecca Thistlethwaite, showing how wheat crops can be helped to resist the increasing heat.

How did you find the exercise of being a top five scientist with us?

It was wonderful. Not only did I get to meet so many different people and gain the experience that I would never have been able to get elsewhere, but being able to make the contacts that have stayed with me from that time. So, yeah, I've been able to make a lot more contacts, have a lot more experiences than I originally thought I would. That's good to know. But how many people do you think, as you travel around, know about where you live, Narrabri, further north in New South Wales, may not necessarily be known so well by most Australians?

No, you're quite right. And I didn't know where it was when I first moved there myself. So my husband likes to say that it was named the sportiest town in Australia in 2001 or something like that. And the whole of the town keeps that as something that is so important to them. How come? Well, we do have actually recently two Olympians that went to Paris from Narrabri. So I mean, that's

Pretty fantastic, given the size of our town. We're a 7,000-person town. Very interesting. Now, I always associate you with great big long pastures and standing trees.

amongst the crops wearing a straw hat and the sun beating down. Is that more or less your life? It is more or less my life. Actually, it's interesting to tell people that my work day is not in a lab. I'm a scientist, but I'm not in a lab. I am in the field every day. And one of the best things about my job, the fact that I get to be in beautiful fields of wheat. Sometimes it's extremely hot, yes, but it's a very different way for a scientist. How hot does it get?

So during harvest, even this year, we've had up to 38 degrees or so through the harvest. And during summer, during the really peak time of summer in January or so, we'll get into the 40s generally. So it does get really, really hot.

And are our crops, such as wheat, able to adapt to such things? Over the years, we have been able to make considerable genetic gain. And then just in the last certain amount of years, we've had a smaller amount of genetic gain. And so we're not finding that we have the diversity that we used to have. There is diversity for things like heat tolerance, drought tolerance...

and maybe that combination effect of heat and drought and then increasing carbon dioxide. And we are making some gains there. So the work that we actually do at the University of Sydney is looking at developing crops for their tolerance to heat and drought in particular. And it's actually interesting that the international germplasm that we bring into Australia gives us that diversity that we need to be able to keep Australian grain growers very, very happy. But what sort of measure is it of survival that you get...

more weight of crops or what? Yep. So it's all to do with yield. Yield is king. And so when you talk to industry and all of the research that we do at the Plant Breeding Institute in Narrabri, it has to be industry relevant. So our grain growers are our key customer and our plant breeding companies are as well. And so yield is key. And so whatever we do within the university has to mimic what we would do within a breeding company's context to be relevant to what they need to

be able to produce the perfect amount of wheat for the Australian market. What's the mechanism though? Because they don't have sweat glands or anything, or maybe they're versions of it, those little holes in the leaves which can transmit mortar. Is it by transmission of water more vigorously or what?

This is still actually under debate and it can depend on the variety as well. So like you say, stomata, the little pores on the leaf, they actually do contribute considerably. But there are other mechanisms. So we're starting to find that we test thousands and thousands different genetic lines of, say, heat tolerant wheat each year.

And the diversity amongst them can be seen in things like a waxiness on the leaf. And there is a perfect amount of glucosity that actually makes that particular plant more heat tolerant or less. And so if you have too much, the plant can't sweat enough.

essentially and so it actually deteriorates that plant and it's an interesting measure because you can't actually test it in all environments so we're testing wheat lines in a place called kundanara in western australia extremely hot environment very tropical environment very different for wheat we're seeing that that glucosity is able to be shown much more prominently in that environment but we don't necessarily see that particular mechanism shown in narrabri at all stages so

We go to Kununurra, we see which ones are more glaucous in that environment, and then we're able to select them in Narrabri, and they're generally more high-yielding. I'm going to ask you a lateral question, I'm afraid. When you've got all that stuff, the stalks and the rest of it, which are possibly more robust, as you say, covered in glaucousness, what happens to the residue? Just...

thrown away or buried or what? So when we harvest, generally we try to do minimal tillage, okay, across the environment. And so to try to make sure that we keep as much moisture and ground cover there for the next season. And so it does to some degree mulch into the ground. And we do, when we harvest, we take just the head of the wheat plant generally. But that straw actually causes a

a lot of trouble at times because if it falls over, we call it lodging, a grain grower is going to be very, very unhappy with that particular type of wheat. So yes, straw is very important in both the pre-harvest and the post-harvest. Let me tell you why I ask, because a couple of weeks ago I broadcast something, actually it was a brilliant PhD student from Nigeria and she was working on sugarcane to make bricks out

with a tenth of the CO2 emissions because concrete itself is pretty bad. And this is sugarcrete. And now they are building their first constructions in India from this work in London by this Nigerian PhD. And if you can imagine all that residue, not just sugarcane, possibly wheat would suit as well.

Absolutely. And that's what we see in certain countries overseas. So in Australia, we don't have the necessity for the straw to be long, for instance. So a plant breeder in Australia may not find that as a good trait to have within their wheat crop. Whereas if we go overseas, they definitely need the length of straw to be able to use in other ways. So I see that. I see the importance of that. Absolutely. Of course, the Green Revolution was based on having more in the food end than...

down below. But I think that we don't actually appreciate the fact that there are a lot of other purposes for whatever is left over. And so that's interesting in an international context. One thing about Narrabri, going back to where you work, is of course there's a famous, or it should be, space station there, the

The compact array of, I think it's 22 great big dishes. You've been there? I have been there, but I have to admit that it is not particularly on my radar. It should be now that we've talked about it, definitely. But when I do talk about Narrabri, a lot of people do say, oh, that's where the big dishes are, isn't it? Isn't that this certain place in Australia? So...

It's very famous. Very famous. Famous indeed. And I think it's called the Paul Wild Observatory Radio Astronomy. And it's out there, like, for instance, in Coonabarabran, not terribly far away, northern New South Wales, the famous Anglo-Australian telescope, which celebrates its 50th anniversary. But back to your own work.

What sort of impact are you having sharing ideas with people from overseas? So recently we've been working with the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, looking at bringing a hybrid wheat system into places like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Ethiopia. That has been...

An amazing feat of technology from the University of Sydney. Hybrid wheat has been worked on for about 160 years now, but has never actually been a perfect system for hybridity. The university has patented a new technology and the idea is to take it into these countries, have it locally led by the country, and then be able to make sure that they're completely sustainable by the end of the project. And when you bring your new ideas there,

are they taken up very easily or quickly? Yes, absolutely. And we're really lucky with the partnerships that we have within those countries. So we have developed over many years, not just in the last few, contacts and knowing how the government works, knowing the right people to be able to contact and keep the momentum in the science. We keep our scientists happy and they move through this technology really easily. Isn't that exciting? And what most recently have you done in that international quest?

Earlier in the year, we went over to Pakistan and visited multiple farmers that are actually taking this technology into a commercial context.

It hasn't been done in other countries yet with this particular hybrid wheat system, but it is fascinating to see the social implications of it actually being uptaken. So we're seeing a 20% increase in yield. And the thing is that the way that the system works allows these farmers to be able to move with whatever the climate is going to throw at them, whatever is going to come to their environments in the future, they will be able to be sustainable for the very long term. One thing finally that you said before, which I find amazing, you said you've got all these

I think you said hundreds of different genetic strains of wheat.

I had no idea there were so many varieties kicking around. Oh, tens of thousands, you would say, and the same with most other food crops. And being able to bring in that international germplasm, like I mentioned earlier, is really crucial to our Australian context, but also being able to have that germplasm exchanged internationally as well from Australia. Because what we've found is that germplasm that works really well in Narrabri also works in places like Sudan. So

So we're able to exchange that and also build those partnerships and relationships at the same time. I wonder how many Australians actually know what work is done here for international interests and just keeping people fed. And amazing that the foundations can be built in Australia. I think we hold back as Australians in terms of the technology that we have within agriculture. And it's amazing to see what it's actually doing overseas.

Well done. Good to see a top five scientist again. Thanks, Robin. I appreciate it. Former ABC top scientist Dr Rebecca Thistlethwaite in Narrabri. Next week, we shall visit the History of Science Museum in Oxford. Production for The Science Show by David Fisher. I'm Robin Williams.

Have you ever seen a movie and then wondered, "What can I believe?" Groundhog Day, it's a classic. But do groundhogs really know how to predict the weather? And what about Jaws? Are great white sharks really going to hold a grudge and come for the town sheriff? And would moray eels make good henchmen like in The Little Mermaid? Nope.

And it turns out, Hollywood lied to us. And that's also the name of the new series from What The Duck with me and Jones. Get it by searching What The Duck on the ABC Listen app.