The Wonder of Brian Cox

by Ben Falk

  ‘Brian was working on interactions in which there were essentially two jets, but they didn’t seem to talk to each other enough as they came out. They didn’t get mixed up as much as they should do. We called them “diffractive jets” or “jets with a rapidity gap”. He worked on a sample we had in the data we took. His thesis was on this – a theorist in Manchester helped him, called Jeff Forshaw.’

  When Cox asked Forshaw to help him with his PhD paper, the latter jumped at the chance. ‘[He was] someone enthusiastic and very capable,’ said Forshaw. And he spent a fair amount of time out in Hamburg working with Cox. ‘I remember staying up all night listening to the Beatles when we had a talk to present at nine o’clock in the morning in Hamburg,’ he continues. ‘We were doing a double act, I think – two talks, one after the other, starting at nine o’clock. And I think we only went to bed at about six o’clock in the morning, had two hours’ sleep, and went off again and gave these talks. We spent the whole night listening to the Beatles and talking physics – I remember that really vividly.’

  A typical day or week at HERA could be long and tiring. Cox might be running shifts, which would involve 10 eight-hour days, then 24 hours off. This could include night shifts too, whichever run you were chosen to do. It was all about manning the experiment and keeping it going, taking the data; it would also mean examining the computer and what the data meant, attacking the data in a way that you could try to measure something specific, depending on what was being measured and in what capacity. ‘He would have to give talks to the group and he’d probably have to help a few graduate students who were younger than him,’ explains Dainton.

  Life at DESY was much the same as in any lab. ‘The lab is on a big campus, but my wife was head of what’s called the International Office at the lab and her job was to get visiting scientists accommodation near to it,’ adds Dainton. ‘They’d have an apartment to live in, there’d be a social life around it – it was completely international.’ A scientific facility isn’t like most corporations, though. Everyone is working towards the same goal and if they fail, they won’t necessarily be shouted at or criticised as in an average job, but they may feel shame that they haven’t achieved what they set out to do. It’s a drive, as Cox has subsequently suggested, towards doing something that will change the world for the better; it also means young scientists are completely cosmopolitan.

  ‘I don’t know how Brian mixed in with his peers, but he was in the international world,’ says Professor Dainton. ‘It must have influenced him – it would influence anyone in those circumstances. The young people like Brian who are working on the experiment, they’re all working together. They don’t think about where a person comes from. I’ve watched so many young people go through that experience in the last 25/30 years, that they come out and they stand head and shoulders above their peers, just because they know how the world works.’ Dainton also points out that one thing the British students at international facilities such as HERA are taught to do is to speak slowly and with not too thick an accent. When presenting a paper to the team on the ground, it was important to remember not all of them spoke great English. Though Dainton cannot remember specifically doing that for Cox, it’s not all that far-fetched to imagine that he may have learnt some of his clarity of speech from Hamburg days.

  As a scientist, his co-ordinator remembers a ‘run-of-the-mill student mucking in with everyone else.’ Dainton adds: ‘Brian has done some good things in his research, no question about it. [But] he’s not going to intellectually change the world, like some of the stars in the field. I don’t for a moment think Brian’s going to produce the grand unified theory. I don’t for a moment think that Brian’s going to make the measurement that will tell us whether neutrinos do travel faster than the speed of light – I don’t think he’s that sort of physicist. I think he can describe what he’s doing to a layman in his own style, which obviously appeals to the people he talks to.’

  While fairly anonymous from a professional point of view, Cox was beginning to show signs of his subsequent interest in the media when he returned to HERA after finishing his thesis in a post-doctoral capacity, emboldened and more confident. ‘He was obviously a more mature student because his background was telling us things were going to get better,’ says Dainton. ‘At the time, he was very media-savvy, there’s no question about that – in the sense that he was aware of the media all the time and he was always interested in talking to people outside the field. But as time went on, he was obviously getting more and more interested in the media because I remember one time he rolled up on a Thursday, which is when we had the group meeting. And in the morning, I was just about to go to the group meeting and literally half an hour before, he rolled up with recording equipment and said he’d just come in from the UK and he wanted to record the group meeting because he was doing a Radio 4 programme. I kind of looked at him and said, “So, you’re just going to roll up with that, are you?” and he said yes. So I said, “Well, wait a minute – I think we’re going to have to ask the group” – and I think there were about 100 people in this meeting – “whether they mind being recorded and if they say yes, we can do it, but you should first of all ask them.” So, he was already into it at that stage, in 1998/99 or something.’

  More than a decade on and Dainton is slightly shocked at how the wannabe radio presenter has taken over television. ‘Last time I saw him for any length of time was at the 350th anniversary celebration of the Royal Society. He saw me, and came over and chatted, and after about four sentences he was surrounded by these 17- or 18-year-old schoolgirls who wanted his autograph. And I thought, my God, he’s become a celebrity!’

  Dainton is aware of the potential pitfalls of trying to balance a media career with being a professional scientist, though. ‘You can see it already – and this is nothing against him because I rather like him – [but] if he continues to go down this route, he’s going to be a celebrity and if that’s what he wants, then the very best of luck to him. But celebrities exist in a kind of bubble and suddenly if the public decides to turn against them, the bubble bursts. Science is not like that: science is something that you don’t have a bubble. You start off standing on your own little rock, claiming and doing what you’re trying to do because you’re committed to it, and you end up – with a bit of luck – actually adding to that rock in a systematic way in terms of the body of knowledge and understanding which leaves you feeling okay, ten, fifteen, twenty years later. You’ve not earned pots of money, you’ve had a reasonable salary, you feel you contributed a lot; it’s long, hard graft.

  ‘It seems to me he has to make the judgment about what he wants and I personally, like a lot of scientists, would step back and say “We can’t help you with creating a media bubble, it’s not in the nature of what we do.” Stardom, though is a different kind of achievement and one that’s not necessarily compatible with that life.

  ‘This is all beginning to sound a bit too much like hyping a personality,’ Dainton continues. ‘I think what he’s done is he’s landed on his feet doing what he’s good at. The media are hyping him at the moment. They’re hyping him because he appeals to teenagers and to mums and dads, who see their teenagers doing things that are motivated by something they think is worthwhile – he clicks, he’s not stuffy. There’s a great danger here you’re creating a super-character out of someone I regard as perfectly normal. I totally support him [trying to convey science to the general public], just as I think that it’s absolutely wonderful that Bruce Forsyth at the age of 80-plus can still dance around and make people happier because he can make them dance. But Bruce Forsyth is doing it as well for another reason – it gives him a bloody good living and he’s a celebrity. And Brian’s the same. He’s doing it for a bloody good living and the very best of luck to him! The fact that he also helps me in getting good students is a bonus for me, so I tend to go a bit more for Brian than I do for Bruce Forsyth.’

  Not everyone in the scientific community is quite so o
pen-minded, though. Just as bringing a recording device into a HERA meeting caused some distress, so Dainton suggests the transition of an academic into the public arena – and his acceptance there – is bound to cause some jealousy. ‘This is not my opinion, but I can understand it,’ he argues. ‘Brian is a particle physicist by training. However, I went to the Royal Society and I was sitting next door having lunch with a senior colleague and on my other side was an astronomer, who was on a committee I was on from Manchester. My colleague lent across the table and said to this astronomer, “So when Mr Cox finishes his Royal Society Fellowship, are you going to have him back in Manchester?” And the astronomer was looking venomous at the mention of the word “Cox” and just said, “Oh sure, when he comes back, he’s going to get a huge, full teaching load. Blah, blah, blah, blah…” And the way he said it, said it all.

  ‘Many astronomers would professionally react to a person like Brian talking about astronomy and I can understand them thinking that way. I don’t – I don’t mind him at all talking about astronomy or particle physics. But there are people in science who would take a rather, shall we say, religious view of how you do what Brian does and would not feel happy about somebody who’s not Patrick Moore talking about astronomy. And Brian isn’t an astronomer.

  ‘I think that’s rather a pathetic point of view but nevertheless, it must be something Brian has to deal with. And I don’t know what’s happened – I don’t know whether he’s gone back to Manchester at all, whether he’s permanently employed on the BBC. You can see that reflects a perspective, which is understandable in the circumstances by people working in the same department. There’s bound to be, shall we say, odd reaction in the sense of envy maybe, I don’t know.’

  Nevertheless, Professor Dainton admits: ‘We all know that Brian Cox works at his image – people who are in the media do that sort of thing. [Brian’s] serving an audience he’s picked out. I’m sure he’s recognised this himself. It’s the 13- and 14-year-olds and their mums and dads. Whereas Jim Al-Khalili would be on BBC4 and BBC2, Brian would be much more BBC1-ish, if you see what I mean. He’s doing things in the media that are taking him in a particular direction. He’s been on QI, he’s been on some of those late night comedy shows – he’s going that way. Marcus du Sautoy isn’t, nor is Jim Al-Khalili, [but] anybody who helps to explain to the taxpayer – who’s my paymaster – why their money is being spent well, is doing a very good job. And there’s absolutely no doubt that all the people who do that, including Brian, know very well that the British taxpayer’s investment in science is spent extremely efficiently.

  ‘I have no more or no less respect for him than I have for some of the most introverted but brilliant physicists I’m lucky to work with. I haven’t spoken to him for two or three months. He’s having to make a choice whether he goes with the media stuff or with the science because to stay in the science it’s very tough, it’s very competitive. He used to keep saying to me, “I’m going to get back into physics now,” after his first series on the Solar System. Then along came the second series. And he hasn’t popped up on his experiment, I believe, at the LHC for some time. I think there is a great danger that these things can roll out of control and then the bubble bursts.’

  The thing is, Cox was happy to combine his academic work with some dabbling in the media by the turn of the 21st century. Hong Kong entrepreneur Richard Li, the son of his country’s then-richest man, had an audacious plan to converge the internet and television as never before. Network of the World was the result – a series of five web portals and an Asian satellite TV channel based in west London, employing 400 staff. Launched with great pomp in June 2000, one of those portals was called Earth & Space and it needed content. An aspiring young scientist fitted the bill.

  And so did Gia Milinovich, an American ex-pat who had been in England since 1987 after leaving her hometown of Duluth, Minnesota. A sassy, pretty, clever young woman, she had grown up putting on her own TV shows with her sister, dreaming of being a nightclub singer, doctor or cheerleader. ‘When I think back to my childhood, I realise that though my mother thought I was just a lazy sod, my obsession with watching television was actually research,’ she said. ‘I never sang pop songs into my hairbrush, I always played TV presenter. Sometimes I was the host of a music programme or an entertainment programme or was often the reporter interviewing my mother, my friends or my sister, who were playing various roles. I’d write the scripts, the jingles, the ads even and direct everyone – even telling them exactly what to say in response to my questions.’

  Her grandparents were close friends of Bob Dylan’s parents in Minnesota and Beatty Zimmerman (Dylan’s actual surname) was the first person to dress up as Father Christmas for her. By the time she finished high school, Milinovich wanted to be an actress or a journalist, having edited her school newspaper. ‘In the end I decided to study acting,’ she said. She enrolled in theatre arts at the University of Minnesota, grappling with the Method style by pretending to eat non-existent lemons and drinking cups of imaginary coffee. ‘After a couple of years I realised that I wasn’t really hungry enough and was never going to earn the kind of living I wanted out of acting. About two weeks after I decided to pack in the acting, I went for an open audition for presenters for a new teenage entertainment programme. Out of almost 1,000 people, I ended up getting the job.’

  That was 1992 and the job was a show with Gareth Jones, otherwise known as kids’ host, ‘Gaz Top’. Excited but petrified, she realised she had a problem. ‘I knocked on Gareth’s door, went in, told him that I had no idea how to present a live, unscripted programme and that I really needed help,’ she revealed. ‘He spent the next fifteen minutes telling me everything I ever needed to know about presenting. He’s my best friend to this day.’ Several jobs immediately fell into her lap before the inevitable lull, including Nickelodeon’s Hot or Not? and Ice Warriors on Sky Sports. In her downtime, she worked behind the scenes as an assistant producer and director. ‘In 1994, I was asked to write a piece on technology for a BBC Radio 5 computer, technology and internet programme called The Big Byte as a kind of audition piece,’ she remembered. ‘The producer liked it and hired me as computer culture correspondent. I didn’t really know much about the internet or computers at all – I had had a ZX-81 when I was a kid and messed around on the nascent Net with friends as a teenager, but I certainly wasn’t a geek.’

  She had a chance to remedy this when she became pregnant in the mid-1990s. Son Moki was born and in the aftermath of his birth, she decided to specialise as a science and technology presenter. ‘When my baby son was sleeping, I’d devour general science books on physics and astronomy,’ she said. ‘I taught myself Photoshop and HTML coding, I got online and learned everything I could about it.’ Her perseverance was rewarded on going back to work. In 1999, she was hired to present The Kit on BBC Knowledge and soon became established as a tech expert. She also began to take a deeper role in the content and make-up of the shows she participated in, preferring the job title ‘broadcast journalist’ to ‘TV presenter’.

  ‘Ideally, I’d like to write, produce, present, direct, edit, commission and hand myself a BAFTA!’ she joked. ‘I have a lot to say about a lot of things and though I’m happy doing the odd day here and there of just “stand there, say that” presenting, I am most happy when I can take an active role in programme-making. I’m not very good at sitting around and hoping that someone else will come up with an idea for a programme that I’d be interested in working on and offer me a job, so I just started doing it myself. I’ve always felt that my role as a presenter has been to impart information and producing is the natural step for me to take.’

  She broke up with Moki’s father just as their son was about to start primary school. Because he suffers from dysgraphia (the writing equivalent of dyslexia, which was only officially diagnosed when he was 13), Moki always needed extra attention in school and was privately educated, paid for by his father. Milinovich’s deal was that she would esc
hew maintenance in exchange for this. But single motherhood in London was tough and there were times when they had very little money. By the time Moki came along, Milinovich had been a vegetarian for 10 years after signing to The Smiths’ message on their Meat Is Murder album. She fed him a varied diet, including some Japanese and Eritrean dishes, but stayed away from junk food (though they later started eating meat as a family).

  Having grown up in a house with a sister and parents who discussed political issues and watched the news every night, she did the same with Moki, debating topics and making fun of George W. Bush. In fact, by the time he started school and was hearing swearing around the playground, she initiated a rule at home whereby the only time he was allowed to swear was when he was talking about the then-President. In fact, he had to. Despite the fact she, too is a self-confessed atheist and rationalist, she excitedly told him about the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and even played Tooth Fairy when he started to lose his baby teeth.

  On the work front, Network of the World sounded exciting. There was money behind it, the proprietors were ambitious and were looking to enter a market that had so far remained untapped. The company, as it turned out, was completely ahead of its time. ‘I still believe Network of the World was an amazing idea. Network of the World was a real pioneer of multimedia TV,’ argues Chiara Bellati, now a series producer/director of large-scale science shows, but back then the producer/director for the Earth & Space and Tech portals. ‘They managed to curate a lot of raw talent – it was really fun place to work. You hear about places like Google, where people have basketballs and chocolate in the office – that was Network of the World. When it first started going, it literally was a footie table in the corner and people coming round with chocolate bars for free.’