‘Against images made by hands’: Florence Nightingale’s reluctant life in portraiture
Florence Nightingale disliked having her portrait taken as much as she hated being a celebrity, yet it was largely through the visual representations of her face and person in the press that she gained iconic status in Victorian England. Used as a mo....
More details | Watch now‘How should a chemist understand brewing?’ Beer and theory around 1800
Eighteenth-century chemists could gain useful income and patronage as advisors to industry – and some of the wealthiest and most influential industrialists were brewers. Making chemical knowledge credible to this audience, however, was not always e....
More details | Watch now‘Sacrifice of a genius’: Henry Moseley’s role as a Signals Officer in WWI
Henry Gwyn Jeffreys Moseley (1887-1915) was one of the foremost English physicists of the early twentieth century. Probably best remembered for his immense contributions to chemistry and atomic physics in the years immediately prior to the outbreak o....
More details | Watch now‘Behold a New Thing in the Earth!’: Reflections on Science at the Great Exhibition
The Great Exhibition of 1851 has routinely been portrayed as a celebration of science, technology, and manufacturing. However, for many contemporaries – including Prince Albert – it was a deeply religious event. In analysing responses to the Exhi....
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 nowA high jump for science
Sport science is a discipline young in its years compared to medicine and astronomy but over recent years the pursuit of excellence in sport has driven it on. As we approach the London 2012 Olympics we look at what developments have been made in this....
More details | Watch nowA history of autism: my conversations with the pioneers
In this talk, Adam Feinstein will describe two fascinating journeys of discovery: his travels around the world for his new book, speaking to the key pioneers in the history of autism - including close colleagues and relatives of Leo Kanner and Hans A....
More details | Watch nowA molecular window into speech and language
Our capacity for complex speech and language remains one of the most intriguing aspects of being human. It has long been suspected that some answers to this enigma will be found buried within the genome. With recent advances in genetic technologies, ....
More details | Watch nowA natural history of scientists
For most of his life, Richard Fortey, has worked with collections in London's Natural History Museum, so curation has become a kind of unbreakable habit for him. In his Michael Faraday Prize lecture he will present another collection: his own persona....
More details | Watch nowA silent killer?
In communicating the challenges and hopes for the future, Professor Fran Balkwill of Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry will demonstrate how cancer scientists can help patients and their families, as well as inspire young people to take up....
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 nowAdventures in vascular biology
Thirty years ago it was thought that the endothelium, a layer of thin, flat cells that line the interior surface of blood vessels was inert. However, major discoveries since then have demonstrated that it is a highly metabolic organ involved in maint....
More details | Watch nowAlchemy and patronage in Tudor England
Dr Jenny Rampling, Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge. In early modern England, alchemical practitioners employed a range of strategies to win the trust and support of powerful, even royal, patrons: from the preservation of healt....
More details | Watch nowAugmented intelligence: the Web and human computation
This talk is about harnessing human time and energy to address problems that computers cannot yet solve. Although computers have advanced dramatically in many respects over the last 50 years, they still do not possess the basic conceptual intelligenc....
More details | Watch nowBacterial cell walls, antibiotics and the origins of life
The cell wall is a crucial structure found in almost all bacteria. It is the target for our best antibiotics and fragments of the wall trigger powerful innate immune responses against infection. Surprisingly, many bacteria can switch almost effortl....
More details | Watch nowBehaving badly
Are environment, or genetics, more to blame when a human being turns to a life of crime? What does it mean to be criminally insane? And how effectively can a criminal tendency be treated with drugs? What different lights can literature and science sh....
More details | Watch nowBenjamin Franklin in Europe: electrician, academician etc.
Benjamin Franklin, American patriot and natural philosopher, was born 300 years ago. Apart from a brief stay in England as a young man, he spent the first fifty years of his life transforming himself from a nobody into the leading citizen of Philadel....
More details | Watch nowBeyond the human genome project
Dr Lander and his colleagues have developed many of the key tools and generated many of the key information resources for modern mammalian genomics. Their work includes mapping and sequencing of the human, mouse, and other genomes. He was elected a m....
More details | Watch nowBioinspiration: something for everyone
George Whitesides is the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor of Chemistry at Harvard University. Best-known for his work in NMR spectroscopy, organometallic chemistry, molecular self-assembly and nanotechnology, here he introduces sof....
More details | Watch nowBioinspired genotype–phenotype linkages
Florian Hollfelder is based in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Cambridge. He is interested in mechanism in chemistry and biology. Here he describes using principles of natural selection to make functional proteins.
More details | Watch nowBioinspired membrane-based systems
Directrice de Recherche Patricia Bassereau, Institut Curie Centre de Recherche Laboratorie Physico-Chimie, France, speaks on bioinspired membrane-based systems for a physical approach of cell organization and dynamics: usefulness and limitations.
More details | Watch nowBioinspired technology: from cochlear implants to an artificial pancreas
Biology is inspiring technology, which in turn replaces biology. This global trend towards ageing populations, less active lifestyles and fast-food diets, is leading to more cases of, and earlier onset of, chronic conditions such as Type 2 diabetes a....
More details | Watch nowBiomimetic adhesive microstructures
Stanislav Gorb is Professor of Zoology at the University of Kiel, Germany, with an interest in functional morphology and biomechanics. Here he discusses clustering as a form of self-assembly, and applications in adhesion.
More details | Watch nowBrain development and brain repair.
The human brain is made up of close to a trillion nerve cells (or neurons), each of which makes connections with, on average, hundreds of other nerve cells, to form the complex neuronal circuits that control all brain activities, including perception....
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