The popular reception of relativity in Britain
How did it feel to open a newspaper in November 1919 to be greeted by headlines about 'Light Caught Bending' and a 'Revolution in Space and Time'? Einstein's relativity reached a wide public audience in the context of social change. The theory's inte....
More details | Watch nowIron from the sky: the potential influence of meteorites on ancient Egyptian culture.
Ancient Egyptian belief was frequently derived from observations of the natural world, where the gods were considered to control the forces of nature; and as a society, ancient Egyptians placed great value upon order and balance. So how would the app....
More details | Watch nowDeveloping new solar cells – cheaper, or more efficient?
Using solar cells to convert sunlight to electricity is an attractive way to reduce carbon emissions, but solar cells are still too expensive to be installed on the scale required. The next generation of solar cells aim to solve this problem using st....
More details | Watch nowExperimental misunderstandings: the precedent of Francis Bacon’s ‘Sylva Sylvarum’ and the beginnings of the Royal Society
Guido Giglioni is the Cassamarca Lecturer in Neo-Latin Culture and Intellectual History at the Warburg Institute, University of London. By writing a number of natural histories and above all the Sylva Sylvarum, Bacon set an important but difficult pr....
More details | Watch nowUnsung heroes: artistic contributors to the early Royal Society
This lecture discusses the contribution of draftsmen, engravers, artistic fellows and others whose graphic skills were indispensable for the meetings and publications of the early Royal Society (1660-1720). While some of the names of those who produc....
More details | Watch nowMaritime science and the visual culture of exploration: the albums of a Victorian naval surgeon
Naval officers in general, and surgeons in particular, played a significant role in the development of maritime science, through their observations and their collections. This richly-illustrated talk explores the visual culture of maritime science, f....
More details | Watch nowLaputian Newtons: the science and politics of Swift’s ‘Gullivers Travels’
GulliverÕs Travels (1726) contains probably the most famous satire on science in world literature, but the circumstances behind its composition are little known. In this talk, Greg Lynall explains how GulliverÕs ÔVoyage to LaputaÕ was shaped by J....
More details | Watch nowThe Royal Society and the Rothschild ‘Controversy’
In the early months of 1971 the Heath government asked Lord Victor Rothschild to Ôthink the unthinkableÕ in his investigation into government policy. His subsequent report on research funding proposed something the Royal Society judged to be wholly....
More details | Watch now2011 is the 350th anniversary of the publication of a Sceptical Chymist, by Robert Boyle which is considered to be the most important book ever published about chemistry. Boyle was a leading intellectual figure of the 17th century and one of the fo....
More details | Watch nowThe Case of the Poisonous Socks
Bill Brock entertains his audience with many little-known chemical anecdotes.
More details | Watch nowPublishing Faraday’s Candle
Michael Faraday’s The Chemical History of a Candle is arguably the most popular science book ever published. Based on Faraday’s final series of Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institution, it has never been out of print in English since it was fi....
More details | Watch nowRadiometers as buttonholes: the extraordinary material legacy of William Crookes
William Crookes was a physicist, chemist, entrepreneur and spiritualist. Being a consummate experimenter he designed precision instruments of great delicacy, in particular exquisite glass vacuum tubes. The radiometer, when first exhibited in 1875, ....
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