Too often playwrights and directors have virtually no experience of how scientists talk or behave towards each other
A few days after Tom Stoppard’s death last month, Michael Baum, a distinguished surgeon, wrote a letter to the Times. He explained how Stoppard’s discussion of chaos theory in Arcadia had inspired him to discover a new and far more effective chemotherapy to treat breast cancer. ‘Stoppard never learnt how many lives he saved by writing Arcadia,’ wrote Baum.
I’ve long been fascinated by the relationship between science and drama. I knew Tom Stoppard and when I was professor of history and philosophy of science at UCL, we had several illuminating conversations about art, science and theatre, which he recalled in a 1994 article entitled ‘Playing with Science’ for the journal Engineering and Science. ‘Science and art are nowadays beyond being like each other. Sometimes they seem to be each other,’ he wrote. I don’t think he would object to my replacing ‘art’ with ‘drama’. […]
First published in The Spectator on 24 January 2026