Tackling the great challenges of the 21st century
Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society and Lord Stern, President of the British Academy, discussed the new opportunities – and need – for collaboration between the traditional academic disciplines to respond to the big issues of our time,....
More details | Watch nowThe importance of science: an outsider’s perspective
Award-winning author Bill Bryson speaks to Professor Jim Al-Khalili about his personal experiences and perspectives on science, from childhood and his school years, through to writing the highly successful 'A Short History of Nearly Everything' and e....
More details | Watch nowFrancis Crick: anti-vitalist activist
In the course of his scientific career, Francis Crick changed research fields several times. In almost 30 years at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, he worked on protein crystallography, molecular genetics, developmental cell biol....
More details | Watch now(Re)Inventing science publishing: the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society
Philosophical TransactionsÊis the worldÕs first and oldest scientific journal. Still published by the Royal Society, it is about to mark its 350th anniversary, and was instrumental in establishing many forms and facets of modern scholarly publishin....
More details | Watch nowMy sister Rosalind Franklin
Jenifer Glynn discusses her bookÊMy Sister Rosalind Franklin. With the help of family letters and memories, the book puts Rosalind Franklin's DNA work in the context of her other achievements, and Rosalind herself in the context of her family.
More details | Watch nowScience for all: popular science in the age of radio
How do you get ordinary people to take an interest in science? This was already becoming a problem for the scientific community in the early twntieth century. But rather than letting outsiders do the job, the scientists took an active role. They ....
More details | Watch nowAbout Time
'If you knew Time as well as I do,’ the Mad Hatter says to Alice, ‘you wouldn’t talk about wasting it. It’s him.’ In this event, three writers well-acquainted with time discuss how it (or he) both controls and captivates us. Dame Gillian ....
More details | Watch nowNeuroscience of emotion
Panel discussion involving Professor David Freedberg, Dr Daniela Schiller, Ian McEwan and chaired by Professor Ray Dolan FRS, as 2011. Does emotion serve a particular function? How important is emotion in artistic expression? How do we study emotio....
More details | Watch nowThe Notorious Sir John Hill: Georgian Celebrity Science and Attacks on the Royal Society
No man in Georgian England ever attacked the Royal Society more savagely than Sir John Hill (1714-1775), and no one in his era was more notorious for public scandal. This talk sketches Hill's multi-faceted life and assesses his attacks on the Royal S....
More details | Watch nowUK research: building bridges, building prosperity
World leading in quality and impact, UK research is helping us to identify new sources of energy for a more sustainable future and to seek cures for deadly and delibitating diseases. New and profound insights allow us to unearth the secrets of our ....
More details | Watch nowShakespeare the metallurgist, Eliot the spectroscopist: the cultural journey of the chemical elements
From the moment of their discovery, each of the chemical elements has embarked on a journey into our culture. Over millennia and decades, they have gained meaning through encounter and manipulation. Those long known, such as gold, silver, iron and su....
More details | Watch nowThe nature of collective intelligence
Digital data stem from our own personal and social cognitive processes and thus express them in one way or another. But we still don?t have any scientific tools to make sense of the data flows produced by online creative conversations at the scale of....
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