Material World - 26/02/2009

Quentin Cooper tells the story of Emil Abderhalden, the biochemist who rose to the heart of the German scientific establishment on the back of a bogus theory of 'protective enzymes' he first conceived 100 years ago. By the 1930s, his theory was being used in futile blood tests for pregnancy and schizophrenia, and the infamous Dr Josef Mengele employed them in his experiments at Auschwitz. Despite doubts about his work across the world, Abderhalden was nominated 51 times for the Nobel Prize. Plus James Lovelock, pioneering independent scientist and author of the Gaia theory of earth's ecology shares his thoughts on the environment, the future and his own trip into space.