Ruder Boscovic, the eighteenth-century polymath
Roger Boscovich (1711-1787) was a true polymath, making original contributions in science, technology and the humanities. He was born in Dubrovnik but spent much of his working life in Rome, at the Collegium Romanum. This lecture will introduce his l....
More details | Watch nowHow to film the Earth from space
Two University of Sheffield students have recorded a video of the Earth from the edge of space, using homemade equipment and on a shoestring budget.
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....
More details | Watch nowSeeing Further – The Story of Science and the Royal Society
The Story of Science and the Royal Society - a panel discussion chaired by Melvyn Bragg. The panel is made up of Bill Bryson, Maggie Gee, Richard Holmes and Ian Stewart FRS.
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 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 nowRisk: food, fact and fantasy
We all take risks, but most of the time we don't notice it. Eating, like everything else in life, isn't risk free. Is that next mouthful pure pleasure or will it give you food poisoning? Will it clog up your arteries as well as filling your stomach?
More details | Watch nowRestoring Science to its Rightful Place
They were the words that scientists everywhere wanted to hear and President Obama couldn't have been clearer, promising to 'restore science to its rightful place'.
More details | Watch nowProof-reading: Telling stories with numbers and words
How does doing mathematics and writing stories compare? What role is mathematics playing when it is used in literature? Are stories important to understanding mathematics? Do writers have eureka moments? Marcus du Sautoy and Mark Haddon discuss the f....
More details | Watch nowWashing dirty lab coats on the page and the stage
The drive to publish first, even the order of the authors and the choice of the journal; the collegiality and the brutal competition; grantsmanship; the still existing glass ceiling for women; Schadenfreude, even Nobel lust - these are the soul and b....
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The basic sources of Islam - the Qur'an and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad - place a great deal of importance on science. So, theoretically, the relationship between Islam and science is both close and very deep. It was this relationship that....
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