Natural History and the Rights of Woman
During the two-year period of the composition and publication of her Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792), Mary Wollstonecraft, the mother of Mary Shelley and early advocate of women’s rights, read and reviewed a number of important works of n....
More details | Watch nowHeroes of science
Scientists love them. Historians of science can't stand them. The view that science rests on the shoulders of heroes and on them alone cannot be defended. Nonetheless, the public are moved and inspired by the stories of astronauts who've risked their....
More details | Watch nowTriangulating positions: Hevelius, Halley and the management of the open-sights controversy
When the decade-long argument between Johannes Hevelius, the Danzig astronomer, and Robert Hooke about the respective merits of plain and telescopic sights for astronomical instruments reared its head again in 1685, the resulting controversy threaten....
More details | Watch nowSir George Cayley (1773-1857), the father of flight
This talk discusses Cayley's pioneering aviation work, and his roles as an inventor and as founder of the Royal Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street. Cayley's work will be related to the scientific and intellectual milieu of the day, and to debat....
More details | Watch nowHero or villain? Nevil Maskelyne’s posthumous reputation
Nevil Maskelyne, 5th Astronomer Royal and Fellow of the Royal Society, is today best known as the villain of Dava Sobel’s Longitude. This talk will, however, look further back and examine how Maskelyne has fared since his death in 1811, attempting ....
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 nowDream to reality?
Plastics pioneers had great aspirations for their new materials. Roland Barthes called plastics “a miraculous substance . . . a transformation of nature”. Serendipity, careful experimentation and entrepreneurial skills have all played significant....
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 nowTeaching language to the deaf in the 17th century: the dispute between John Wallis and William Holder
In the early years of the Royal Society an acrimonious dispute broke out between John Wallis and William Holder as to which of them had been successful in the ÔexperimentÕ of teaching the deaf child Alexander Popham to speak. Using evidence from th....
More details | Watch nowHenry Briggs’ 400 years of geometry at Gresham College
Henry Briggs was the first Gresham Professor of Geometry. In this lecture he describes the College's early days, and surveys the history of the Geometry Chair over the succeeding 400 years.
More details | Watch nowOur genomes, our history
Genetic differences between humans reflect the fundamental processes, such as mutation, recombination and natural selection, which have influenced our evolutionary history. Now that we can chart the genomes of many individuals, we are finding many su....
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