The 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 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 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 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 nowRuder 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 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 nowThe social function of history: policy, history and twentieth-century science
Historians bring to thinking about science policy a very particular understanding which should be central to policy: historians are trained to know in their bones that the future is unknown and to understand the power of the cheap futurism which char....
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