Professor Josephine Arendt (b 1941) is Emeritus Professor of Endocrinology in the University of Surrey. Trained as a biochemist she is a specialist on biological rhythms and has pioneered the field of chronobiology. She has researched biological rhythms and their mechanisms widely in animals and humans, including studies on jet-lag, sleep disorders in the blind, shift work, and devised techniques to measure melatonin and its metabolites. In this interview and associated material she describes her career and discusses many of these fascinating aspects of her work.

Interview conducted by Professor Tilli Tansey, for the History of Modern Biomedicine Research Group, 17th March 2015, and transcribed by Debra Gee. The transcript of this interview is available at http://www.histmodbiomed.org/file/arendt-josephine-transcript-video-interviewpdf. A longer, audio-only interview, is also available at http://www.histmodbiomed.org/file/arendt-josephine-transcript-audio-interviewpdf The original tapes and unedited transcripts will be available to study in the Wellcome Library. Professor Arendt also contributed to the Witness Seminar on Seasonal Affective Disorder  (http://www.histmodbiomed.org/witsem/vol51) which she refers to as ‘the text’ in this interview, and a related interview with Professor Norman Rosenthal is at http://www.histmodbiomed.org/article/rosenthal-norman.  Funded by a Strategic Award to Professor Tilli Tansey from the Wellcome Trust.