Brian Cox cheerfully admits that his TV documentaries are part-scientific exposition, part eye-boggling travelogue. “The original, very good idea,” he says, “was that we should use places on Earth as analogues for the solar system.”

Wonders of the Solar System, Wonders of the Universe and other shows have inspired countless young and not so young minds. But Cox still thinks the screen is “no substitute” for actually visiting great sites of scientific discovery: “TV can light the flame. But to go further you need to go to the places where cutting-edge science was done.”

For this list we gave him a strict brief: no Namibian deserts or Chilean glaciers. So here are Cox’s top 10 places in Britain and Ireland that changed the world.

Jodrell Bank, Cheshire



My mum and dad would take me there when I was growing up in Manchester. You feel that this large thing pointing into the sky is capable of discovering places you can only dream of: it’s a symbol of everything that’s magical about astronomy. It is still one of the world’s largest radio telescopes and the headquarters of the Square Kilometre Array, which is building the world’s largest telescope, in Western Australia.

• Daily 10am-4pm, adult £8, child £5.95, family £26.50-£31, jodrellbank.net

Royal Observatory, Greenwich, London



Photograph: Alamy

This place shows the close connection between astronomy and seafaring. To navigate, you need to know what the time is. So telling the time is ultimately linked to astronomy, and to the great challenge of defining longitude. Greenwich has a tremendous visitor centre: you can stand on the zero longitude line. The telescope dome is quite small but very evocative.

• Daily 10am-5pm, adult from £9, child from £5.85, rmg.co.uk

Woolsthorpe Manor, Lincolnshire

The apple tree at Woolsthorpe Manor upon which the apple is said to have fallen on Sir Isaac Newton’s head. Photograph: Alamy

Isaac Newton was the first modern scientist, and his Principia Mathematica of 1687 is the first modern scientific document. The key idea that the laws of nature that you encounter here on Earth are the same that govern the universe is made real. It was a big leap. Did the idea come to him when he saw an apple fall from a tree? Well, you can visit his house – and there is an apple tree there, as well as a Science Centre where kids can play with light and find out how gravity works.

• Opens at 11am, closing time varies but is 5pm from April, adult £8.50, child £4.25, free to NT members, nationaltrust.org.uk

Trinity College School of Physics, Dublin

Photograph: Alamy

Erwin Schrödinger was one of the founders of quantum mechanics but he also inspired Crick and Watson, who often cite his book, What Is Life?, as the inspiration for their quest. The book was based on a series of lectures Schrödinger gave at Trinity College in 1943. It was also the inspiration for my series Wonders of Life. On 5 and 6 September, the 75th anniversary of Schrödinger’s lectures, Trinity will host a conference called The Future of Biology in Dublin’s National Concert Hall.

• General admission free, conference €100, tcd.ie. The College’s Science Gallery is open Tues-Fri noon-8pm, Sat-Sun noon-6pm

Saddleworth, Greater Manchester

Photograph: Alamy

Saddleworth was the centre first of wool production, and then cotton. The Huddersfield Narrow Canal goes straight through the town and over the Pennines – straight through where I was born, basically. I am quite geographically focused in my knowledge of early industrial Britain! The canal has been restored: you can get boats and float along and see the way the industrial revolution unfolded.

• canalrivertrust.org.uk

The Royal Institution, London

Michael Faraday at the Royal Institution, c.1850. Photograph: Alamy

In this genuinely powerful place, you can see the lab where Michael Faraday laid the foundations of modern civilisation with his discovery of electromagnetism in 1831. Even more important for me is the lecture theatre. Faraday, and Joseph Banks before him, really understood that science was not something to keep to yourself. Faraday – an apprentice bookbinder – was inspired by Humphrey Davy, whose public lectures he went to in 1812. I, too have given a lecture there: mine was The Science of Dr Who, with Matt Smith.

• Mon-Fri 8am-6pm, free, rigb.org

Manchester Museum of Science and Industry

Photograph: Alamy

I love the aerospace gallery, and especially the English Electric Lightning, which has always been my favourite aircraft. I used to go to Manchester airport with my dad and write down plane numbers in the 1970s. The first passenger railway station is also in the museum, which was built on the Manchester-Liverpool line. You can see why a friend of mine, Peter Saville [the Factory Record graphic designer] calls Manchester the first modern city. You see the industrial revolution beginning.

• Daily 10am-5pm, free, msimanchester.org.uk

University of Manchester

The Rutherford Building, University of Manchester. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

This is where I studied, and now teach. In the Rutherford building, you can visit the lab (little room, big plaque) where Ernest Rutherford discovered the atomic nucleus – nuclear and particle physics was invented on that spot. There is also quite a nice museum. I like the Egyptology bit: we’re famous for our mummy collection. The National Graphene Institute is also here, in a spectacular building. When they were digging its foundations, they found the club which Friedrich Engels belonged to when he was working with Karl Marx, and a sink from the club is on display in the lobby. Konstantin Novoselov, one of the two Nobel prizewinners who discovered graphene, insisted it was installed in the lobby.

• Daily 10am-5pm, free, manchester.ac.uk

The Eagle, Cambridge

Photograph: Alamy

Scientists are excitable people. What do you do when you’ve had some amazing revelation, such as discovering the secret of life itself? You go down the pub and tell people. That’s what Francis Crick did one lunchtime in February 1953 after he and James Watson had discovered the structure of DNA. You can see the path he ran down from the old Cavendish lab. [Crick and Watson were regulars at the pub, and there’s a plaque above their favourite table.]

• 8 Benet Street, greeneking-pubs.co.uk

Cromford Mills, Matlock, Derbyshire

Photograph: Alamy

This makes a nice side trip if you’ve been to the science museum in Manchester. It’s probably the oldest mill in the world and, again, one of the places where the industrial revolution began. It’s a Unesco world heritage site now, and a brilliant place.

• Daily 10am-5pm, adult from £5, child free, cromfordmills.org.uk