Inside the lives of the scientists who are exploring the world, our universe, the past and ourselves.

Based on the interviews broadcast on BBC Radio 4's hugely popular series, The Life Scientific: Explorers takes science out of its box and introduces us to the men and women who make it happen.

The explorers featured in this volume include: Michele Dougherty, the mathematician who persuaded the Cassini mission to Saturn to make a diversion; Richard Fortey on his love of trilobites; Monica Grady, Meteorite Lady; neurosurgeon Henry Marsh on slicing through our thoughts; the Director of the British Antarctic Survey, Jane Francis; Brian Cox on quantum mechanics; and Nobel Prize winner John Sulston on why he thought it would be a good idea to sequence the human genome.