BOOK LAUNCH This lecture describes three ways in which technology developed for gardens changed the shape of England and its built environment. Gardening innovations in water engineering (17th and 18th century artificial lakes), central heating for greenhouses, and glass in construction went on to have a significant impact on our lives and environment. Roderick Floud's An Economic History of the English Garden will be launched at this event. A lecture by Roderick Floud, Former Provost of Gresham...
Nov 05, 2019•47 min
This lecture will explore fully autonomous weapons, the products of AI technology, and the arguments for and against their use. It will then look at the more complex issues of the ethical role of the state in the protection of its population, and the ethical choices of individuals versus those of corporations, whose role in large-scale military-industrial complexes is crucial. The lecture will also mention the emergence of a form of psychopathology in some weapons producers. A lecture by Yorick ...
Nov 05, 2019•47 min
The cosmic microwave background is the luminous echo of the primordial explosion, the Big Bang — literally the oldest light in the Universe. Exquisitely precise measurements of this light have allowed astronomers to achieve what might seem impossible: weighing the universe, and thereby establishing the geometry of space. This lecture will explain the physics of the cosmic microwave background and the challenges in understanding where our universe came from. A lecture by Roberto Trotta, Visiting ...
Nov 04, 2019•41 min
The 2014 scandal over Rachel Dolezal's lying about being of African-American heritage reignited debates about the politics of hair. It has been followed by numerous books with titles such as Don't Touch My Hair. This lecture explores how hair has been seen as symbolic of empowerment, deviance, and identity. It looks at the role of big business in promoting grooming products (including scalp-damaging chemicals); the hair grooming regulations of the military; and the political significance of faci...
Oct 31, 2019•43 min
Examples of cancers caused largely by infections include cervical cancer, some liver cancers, and gastric cancer. If the infection can be prevented, or treated, the cancer can also be prevented. When the immune system is damaged, including by infections like HIV, cancers increase. Understanding the importance of the immune system has led to new avenues for the treatment of cancer. This lecture will also consider one of the fastest moving areas of cancer treatment, stimulating the immune system t...
Oct 30, 2019•53 min
Diaghilev found that the Oriental style that had been cultivated by Russian composers was a perfect match for the Parisians' love of exoticism, and he started to commission new ballets for this market niche. These were so successful that even Parisian women's fashions came under their influence. But Russian folk art and music had the same exotic appeal in Paris, and Diaghilev discovered that Stravinsky was the man to turn this new 'product' into great art that was also modernist and attention-gr...
Oct 29, 2019•1 hr 1 min
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES Freedom has been central to the identity of the City of London for centuries. But from the Seventeenth to the Nineteenth centuries, the African Slave Trade and Plantation Slavery in the Americas were key to London's banking, insurance, shipping, manufacturing, commodity trades with Europe, gold and silver supply in London, and later merchant banks like Barings, Schroeder and Kleinwort. The City also benefited from the end of Slavery, as compensated emancipa...
Oct 28, 2019•42 min
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES A choir of ex-slaves, raising funds to build their University, toured America from 1871, suffering discrimination and hardship. They came to England, were treated with respect and sang to Queen Victoria and Gladstone. Spiritual songs are folk music and belong to us all, but because they came out of such horrific suffering it's hard to know how to sing them. This lecture tells the tale of the singers whose courage and enterprise brought them to the world. Th...
Oct 24, 2019•51 min
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTURE The event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of exploration. The main speaker, Professor Ana Simões, will discuss A Global History of the Eclipse of 29 May 1919 (6pm). This will be preceded by shorter presentations by Dr Stephen Johnson on Privateer and Mathematician: the Voyages of Edward Wright (4pm) and ...
Oct 23, 2019•1 hr
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTURE The event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of exploration. The main speaker, Professor Ana Simões, will discuss A Global History of the Eclipse of 29 May 1919 (6pm). This will be preceded by shorter presentations by Dr Stephen Johnson on Privateer and Mathematician: the Voyages of Edward Wright (4pm) and ...
Oct 23, 2019•45 min
THE 2019 BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MATHEMATICS / GRESHAM COLLEGE ANNUAL LECTURE The event will focus upon mathematical expeditions, outlining how the use of mathematics has been instrumental to the success of historical voyages of exploration. The main speaker, Professor Ana Simões, will discuss A Global History of the Eclipse of 29 May 1919 (6pm). This will be preceded by shorter presentations by Dr Stephen Johnson on Privateer and Mathematician: the Voyages of Edward Wright (4pm) and ...
Oct 23, 2019•42 min
Most information from outer space reaches us at the speed of light and this governs our understanding of time and evolution in the cosmos. When we observe the Universe, we are 'looking back in time': we see the Universe as it was, not how it is. This is actually very helpful as we seek to discern and understand cosmic history and how the Universe has changed since earlier times. A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 23 October The transcript and downloadable version...
Oct 23, 2019•55 min
If people cannot identity themselves digitally then the digital society does not work. How do biometrics help reduce crime and is it possible to have a biometric system yet not broadcast even more personal information than we do now? There are hosts of biometric systems but which ones work and which are little more than guessing? A lecture by Richard Harvey, IT Livery Company Professor of IT 22 October The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College...
Oct 22, 2019•57 min
BOOK LAUNCH Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) is best known for his Alice books. But his day job was as a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church in Oxford. What mathematics was he interested in? - and how good a mathematician was he? This illustrated lecture and book launch will attempt to answer these questions by outlining his mathematical life, labours and legacy in the context of Victorian Oxford. A lecture by Professor Robin Wilson, Emeritus Gresham Professor of Geometry 21 October The transcr...
Oct 21, 2019•51 min
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES Dr Kaufmann tells the intriguing tales of three Africans living in Tudor England - Jacques Francis, a diver employed by Henry VIII to recover guns from the wreck of the Mary Rose; Mary Fillis, a Moroccan woman baptized in Elizabethan London; and Edward Swarthye, a porter who whipped a fellow servant at their master's Gloucestershire manor house. Their stories illuminate key issues: - how did they come to England? What were their lives like? How were they tr...
Oct 17, 2019•1 hr 5 min
In contrast to their stark socio-economic and environmental differences, the communities of Harbury, UK and Sekenani, Kenya are building 'collaborative ecosystems' that are helping people and their environment to flourish. With similar ideas on issues as wide-ranging as energy generation to the creation of well-being, these two communities are actively engaged in delivering the UN Sustainable Development Goal 17, 'to revitalise the global partnership for sustainable development' through a new co...
Oct 15, 2019•42 min
PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES Using memory scholarship, this talk will examine how the history and memory of enslavement shaped questions of identity and citizenship in Europe. In Africa, debates about the origins of exclusion in stratified post-slavery societies have been challenging the mechanisms of marginalisation of people of slave descent. In those contexts, the notion of collective memory is a useful tool to understand demands for reparatory justice, and how these can contradict ...
Oct 14, 2019•39 min
This lecture reports on the findings of The Independent Tribunal into Forced Organ Harvesting from Prisoners of Conscience in China (June 2019), which examined reports of state-sponsored murder for the harvesting and sale of organs. The very need for a People's Tribunal to deal with an issue of this gravity reflects the timidity of governments when asked to deal with the criminal behaviour of another state. The tribunal's conclusions will be set within the ethical standards expected of medical p...
Oct 10, 2019•54 min
2019 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of Sir Joseph Bazalgette, and will see the building of the first major addition to the system he created to prevent sewage entering the Thames. The Thames Tideway Tunnel is now finally making its way 16 miles beneath the course of the river from Acton to the Thames Estuary, to intercept storm water which would otherwise enter the Thames. The illustrated lecture will examine Bazalgette's achievement and the work involved in building this latest additi...
Oct 09, 2019•51 min
When Thomas Sprat's The History of the Royal-Society of London appeared in 1667, it was less a history than a manifesto for the future, designed to convince Charles II that experimental research was a worthwhile investment. Focusing on experiment and travel, this lecture describes the aims and activities of the early Royal Society almost two centuries before the word 'scientist' was invented. As Sprat made clear, science, imperialism and finance were inextricably linked. A lecture by Dr Patricia...
Oct 08, 2019•51 min
This lecture examines the mathematics behind computing, starting with the history of the explosive growth of computer technology, from code breaking through to all aspects of modern communication and security, as well as the simulation of physical processes as varied as the evolution of the universe to predicting the weather. It looks at the types of problems computers can solve, as well as the future possibilities of quantum computing. A lecture by Chris Budd OBE, Gresham Professor of Geometry ...
Oct 08, 2019•1 hr
Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) imagined a utopian island including an experimental garden, where plants could be made "greater much than their nature". These new plants were central to Bacon's dream of a better world, where hunger - and even death itself - might be conquered. Robert Sharrock's History of the improvement and propagation of vegetables (1660) attempted to apply Bacon's new learning and improve humanity's food supply. This lecture will begin with Bacon's imagined garden, then c...
Oct 07, 2019•47 min
2019 marks 100 years since the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 when a woman was recognised as a 'person' in law. This groundbreaking Act enabled women to be awarded university degrees and to enter professions such as law and medicine from which they had been barred. But women were excluded from the foreign and diplomatic service until 1946, and while they were allowed to sit on juries, they were widely excluded from cases involving sexual assault until 1972. What did the Act achieve and ...
Oct 03, 2019•56 min
Classic time management frameworks advise us to focus on the important rather than the urgent. But these frameworks seem not to be applicable to the 21st century, where technology means that we are constantly bombarded with deadlines. This talk will explain how to focus on important long-term goals but at the same time meet urgent short-term deadlines; how to use email as an effective communication tool without being overwhelmed by it; and how to outsource and automate routine tasks. A lecture b...
Oct 02, 2019•54 min
The speed of light has fundamental significance. This talk will explain how the speed of light was first measured, and how an obscure but brilliant patent clerk in Bern, Switzerland by the name of Albert Einstein deduced that the speed of light is the upper speed limit for everything in the Universe. Interesting effects occur when particles are accelerated and achieve speeds close to that of light; these unusual phenomena take place not only in particle accelerators here on Earth but out in spac...
Oct 02, 2019•51 min
THE 2019 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY COLIN MATTHEW MEMORIAL LECTURE PART OF OUR BLACK HISTORY MONTH SERIES In the years after 1945 successive British governments set out to weaponise the nation's immigration policy. To maintain historic ties to the Old Commonwealth, and shore up Britain's position as a 'world power' they encouraged and even subsidised the emigration of over a million Britons while simultaneously recruiting thousands of East Europeans for new lives in Britain. Yet in 1948, with the ...
Oct 01, 2019•48 min
After the UN Climate Action Summit in September, our Environment Professor will be talking to three experts about whether we still have a meaningful chance of averting a climate catastrophe, and how we can get there. The Extinction Rebellion protests pushed climate up the news agenda early in 2019, but what has happened since then, and what is happening globally? Professor Vicky Pope will discuss the challenges of climate modelling and reduction of emissions; Dr Damien Short will talk about why ...
Sep 30, 2019•1 hr 2 min
Spain became a byword for cruelty in much of Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether it was the brutality of American colonisation, the tyranny of the Spanish Inquisition or the horrors of the Eighty Years' War in the Netherlands. This lecture will survey this 'black legend' and ask what made it so enduring - and why some parts of the story, such as the Inquisition's genocidal campaign against Spanish Jews, received so much less attention than others. A lecture by Alec Ryrie, ...
Sep 25, 2019•56 min
The great Russian impresario Serge Diaghilev didn't have the talents to become an artist or the money to become a patron. His gift was to inspire, facilitate and market artistic projects that were highly colourful and distinctive. In this lecture we follow his early years, when he published The World of Art, a provocative Russian journal, exhibited Russian visual art in Paris, and then brought Russian music there, culminating in his production of Musorgsky's opera Boris Godunov. A lecture by Mar...
Sep 24, 2019•57 min
When Alexander Korda teamed Michael Powell with Emeric Pressburger in 1939, a lasting partnership between this Englishman and refugee Hungarian must have seemed unlikely. Yet they soon discovered a remarkable bond, pushing each other far beyond what they could do separately, and creating a unique body of filmmaking. This lecture explores how the partnership worked during the 1940s, drawing in collaborators from many backgrounds who also gave of their best, and benefiting from the unique conditio...
Sep 23, 2019•54 min
