The Royal Society Audio Podcast
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Lectures on topical science issues brought to you by the Royal Society.
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Chasing Venus
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 15, 2012
New York Times Best Selling and award-winning author Andrea Wulf tells the extraordinary story of the first
global scientific collaboration set amid warring armies, hurricanes, scientific endeavour and personal tragedy. On 6
June 1761 and 3 June 1769 the planet Venus passed between earth and sun – each time visible as a small black
dot. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs – eight years apart – but then it takes more than a century before they
are seen again. In the 1760s the world’s scientific community was electrified because the transit would allow them
for the first time to calculate the distance between the planets in our solar system. At a time when war was
tearing Europe and much of the rest of the world apart, hundreds of astronomers overcame political, geographical
and intellectual boundaries to work together. For a decade the Royal Society was gripped by transit fever,
organising viewings and expeditions to farflung corners of the globe, including Captain Cook’s Endeavour voyage
to Tahiti.
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Sir George Cayley (1773-1857), the Father of Flight
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 08, 2012
In this talk, Alan Morrison discusses Cayley's pioneering aviation work; his role 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 debates regarding the public engagement with science and technology.
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Hero or villain?
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Apr 26, 2012
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 to pinpoint when and why a more negative assessment overshadowed the positive
celebration of a significant figure of British science
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How should a Chemist understand Brewing?
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 23, 2012
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 easy: most brewers trusted the direct lessons of the brewhouse – and also the countinghouse
– to those of the laboratory. In this talk, Dr James Sumner discusses how chemists tried to resolve these problems, and how they were challenged by experienced brewers promoting a scientific identity of their own.
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Dream to Reality?
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 23, 2012
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 roles in the development of modern plastics. This presentation by Dr Susan Mossman of the Science Museum will assess whether the visions of key early pioneers such as Leo Baekeland have been realised today.
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'Against Images Made By Hands': Florence Nightingale’s Reluctant Life in Portraiture
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 23, 2012
Florence Nightingale disliked having her portrait taken as much as she hated being a celebrity, yet it was largely through the visual representations of her face and person in the press that she gained iconic status in Victorian
England. Representations of the idealised Angel of the Crimea tell as much about attitudes of her time as
they do about the reality of her life. Natasha McEnroe examines Nightingale’s life through a selection of images
of her, and will consider whether they can shed some light on the controversy around the mysterious illness of her
later years.
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The first ornithologist: Francis Willughby
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 23, 2012
Francis Willughby transformed the study of birds in the mid 1600s. Rejecting anecdotes, hieroglyphs and
emblematics, he made ornithology scientific for the first time. Sadly, he was almost certainly unaware of success
since he died before his pioneering encyclopaedia was published. His ambitious project was completed and
published by his colleague and one-time mentor John Ray, and entitled The Ornithology of Francis Willughby
(1678). Tim Birkhead discusses the way Willughby and Ray worked together to produce this landmark in ornithological
studies.
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Shakespeare the metallurgist, Eliot the spectroscopist
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 23, 2012
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 sulphur, all found in the Bible, have largely settled associations with immortality,
virginity, strength and evil. The arts exploit, renew and modify these meanings often in surprising ways. Hugh Aldersey-Williams elaborates.
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The History of the Web Part I
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Jan 12, 2012
Wendy Hall is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Southampton. Her research interests include the development of web technologies, digital libraries, and human computer interaction. In this talk she will discuss the history of the web, and give an insider's perspective on its possible future.
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Publishing Faraday's Candle
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Jan 05, 2012
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 first published in 1861.
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Radiometers as buttonholes
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Dec 20, 2011
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, took the scientific world by storm, and became his trade mark.
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Jonas Moore
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Dec 15, 2011
The mathematician and surveyor Jonas Moore was elected FRS in the 1670s, but under the Cromwellian regime he had had a different kind of career as a surveyor, working for the company that successfully completed the draining of the Fens. This paper examines one of the products of that time: his sixteen-sheet 'Mapp of the Great Levell', printed in 1657 or (more likely) 1658. It was an impressive advertisement, for the drainage project, for the skills of its Surveyor, and for the increasing capabilities of the English map trade.
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Science for all
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Dec 08, 2011
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. This talk explores their successes and failures as communicators, with comments on how things changed between then and now.
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Mary Somerville
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Dec 02, 2011
Mary Somerville (1780-1872) was a leading mathematician and author of important books on the sciences: it was in connection with a review of one of these that the term "scientist" first appeared in print. This talk examines her career in relation to debates about the role of women in the making of knowledge and her vision of science in furthering the progress of civilisation and empire.
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Music, architecture and acoustics in Renaissance Venice
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Nov 24, 2011
During the Renaissance in Venice, composers such as Gabrieli and Monteverdi created some of their greatest masterpieces for performance in the great churches on festive occasions. But what would the music have sounded like, given its complexity and the long reverberation times of the large churches?
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Niepce in England
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 18, 2011
In October 2010 the National Media Museum hosted the 'Niepce in England' Conference where they could announce and share with the photographic, conservation and scientific communities the ground breaking findings which had been discovered during the collaborative research partnership between the National Media Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute.
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Alchemy and patronage in Tudor England
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Nov 10, 2011
In early modern England, alchemical practitioners employed a range of strategies to win the trust and support of powerful, even royal, patrons: from the preservation of health with potent elixirs, to the resolution of England's bullion shortage through mass production of transmuted gold.
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John Aubrey
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Oct 05, 2011
John Aubrey FRS (1626—97) wrote some of the earliest and certainly some of the liveliest sketches of scientists in the seventeenth century, mainly in his famous Brief Lives (c. 1680—81). He wrote these from an insider’s view: his many friends included Robert Hooke and a number of other Fellows of the Royal Society
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Doting on Instruments by Rebecca Pohancenik, Queen Mary
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 03, 2011
Through the turbulent 17th century, one interest transcended social, political and national boundaries: the love of instruments. Kings commissioned the finest, gentlemen paid a king's ransom for the latest and every immigrant tradesman 'knew' a scheme for some improvement that would make his potential patron wildly wealthy. This talk will look at the challenges of the instrument maker, for whom the constant need to innovate and impress was a compelling reality, and consider how the 17th century penchant for 'doting on instruments' helped or hindered their advancement.
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'Behold a New Thing in the Earth!'
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Apr 20, 2011
The Great Exhibition of 1851 has routinely been portrayed as a celebration of science, technology, and manufacturing. However, for many contemporaries-including Prince Albert-it was a deeply religious event. In analysing responses to the Exhibition, we shall examine the complex and fascinating relations between science, technology and religion at the start of the high Victorian period.
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John Soane and the learned societies of Somerset House
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Apr 20, 2011
The architect John Soane became an Associate of the Royal Academy in 1795, a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1796 and, finally, a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1821. All three were then housed in Somerset House. Soane was an avid collector and enthusiastic auto-didact, and the world of these learned societies, their libraries and museums, was the one in which he felt most at home. This talk will explore the influences upon Sir John Soane as he transformed his own house at 13 Lincolns Inn Fields into a museum, a process finalised by a private Act of Parliament passed in 1833.
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Science and the Church in the Middle Ages
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 18, 2011
It is commonly assumed that what little scientific advance there might have been in the Middle Ages was held back by the power of the Church. But, in fact, there was important progress in science and technology during the medieval period. And the influence of the Church was generally positive even if it imposed strict limits beyond which philosophers should not tread.
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A history of autism: my conversations with the pioneers
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 11, 2011
In this talk, Adam Feinstein will describe two fascinating journeys of discovery: his travels around the world for his new book, speaking to the key pioneers in the history of autism - including close colleagues and relatives of Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger - to investigate how the concept of the condition has evolved over the past 75 years; and his own remarkable personal voyage of understanding through his autistic son, Johnny.
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Paul Dirac and the religion of mathematical beauty
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 04, 2011
For the great theoretical physicist Paul Dirac, the importance of mathematical beauty was 'like a religion'. Although his first papers on quantum mechanics showed an acute aesthetic awareness, he first set out his principle of mathematical beauty only in 1939, a decade after he did his best work. In this talk, Farmelo will discuss the origins of Dirac's aesthetic sensibility and take a look at the extraordinary personality of the physicist Niels Bohr once called 'the strangest man'.
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Free-thinking and language-planning in the 17th century Royal Society
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Apr 04, 2011
Francis Lodwick was an unusual 17th century Fellow of the Royal Society. At the time the Society consisted mainly of gentleman-philosophers, but he was a London cloth-merchant who never attended university. The Fellows deliberately avoided discussing religion, but Lodwick was a radical free-thinker who composed long, secret, treatises critiquing the Biblical account of creation and arguing in favour of divorce, usury, and the notion that Biblical law applied only to the Jews. What was this man doing at the Royal Society? This talk will discuss Lodwick's religious theories in the context of his major contributions to 17th century linguistics and the search for a universal language.
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Ghosts of women past
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Mar 08, 2011
"I do not agree with sex being brought into science at all. The idea of 'woman and science' is completely irrelevant. Either a woman is a good scientist, or she is not." So declared Hertha Ayrton over a hundred years ago - but she was unable to become a Fellow of the Royal Society because she was married. How has the past affected present attitudes towards women in science?
Dr Patricia Fara, Clare College, Cambridge
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137: Carl Jung, Wolfgang Pauli and the pursuit of a scientific obsession
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Dec 02, 2010
In 1932 an obsession with the numbers 3, 4 and 137 sparked a strange friendship between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychoanalyst Carl Jung - a unique meeting of minds. Which is the primal number that seems to hint at the origins of the universe?
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Presidential Politics: how Henry Tizard did not become PRS in 1945
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Dec 02, 2010
In 1945, the Royal Society needed a new President to succeed Sir Henry Dale. The debate about who it should be turned into a clash between competing visions of the Society should be doing in the postwar world.
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The Evolutionary Archive
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Nov 23, 2010
The Accounts addressing the recent history of British evolutionary science have not yet fully benefited from research using archives held at British Library, including the papers of John Maynard Smith FRS
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Scientists Abroad: Royal Society expeditions in the 20th century
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Nov 23, 2010
The Royal Society has a long tradition of sponsoring scientific expeditions to all parts of the world. Although less famous than James Cook's 18th century voyages, a number of expeditions were mounted in the 20th century to places such as Antarctica, the Solomon Islands, Brazil, and Aldabra Atoll.
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"An Amateur in a Professional Game - Sir Harold Thompson FRS, the FA and English Football"
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Nov 04, 2010
As well as being a distinguished physical chemist and Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society, Sir Harold Thompson (1908-1983) is an important but neglected figure in the history of English football. Based on the personal papers he left to the Royal Society, this talk will examine Harold Thompson's life in, and influence on, English football and the FA.
Professor Matthew Taylor and Dr Neil Carter, International Centre for Sport History and Culture, De Montfort University
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Scientists Abroad: Royal Society expeditions in the 20th century
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Nov 16, 2010
The Royal Society has a long tradition of sponsoring scientific expeditions to all parts of the world. Although less famous than James Cook's 18th century voyages, a number of expeditions were mounted in the 20th century to places such as Antarctica, the Solomon Islands, Brazil, and Aldabra Atoll.
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"The 19th century photographs"
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Oct 29, 2010
An introduction to the early photographic collections of the Royal Society. This talk will explore the extensive collection of photographic portraits of key scientists and look at how it all began.
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"Mr Baker gave a paper":early links between the Royal Society and the [Royal] Society of Arts
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Oct 22, 2010
Henry Baker (1698-1774) microscopist and son-in-law of Daniel Defoe was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1740 and adecade later he played a prominent part in the foundation of the Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (known since 1908 as the Royal Society of Arts).
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Fleas, Lice and an Elephant on the Moon
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Sep 30, 2010
The early Fellows of the Royal Society were convinced that their research would be of great benefit to mankind but their contemporaries were not so sure. This talk will discuss some of the jokes, ballads and poems written in response to the activities of the Royal Society in the seventeenth century.
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Pictures in the Sky:the Origin and History of the Constellations
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Sep 30, 2010
In the days before writing, storytellers used the sky as a picture book to illustrate their tales of gods, mythical heroes and fabulous beasts. Those pictures among the stars were the origin of our system of constellations. Today, the entire sky is divided into 88 constellations of varying shapes and sizes. This talk, which includes illustrations from some of the greatest star atlases in the world, will trace the origin of the constellation system back to Greek times and explain who filled in the gaps between the ancient Greek figures, who decided on the official boundaries between constellations, and how the names of certain stars came about.
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The Great Experiment
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Sep 30, 2010
Within a few years of its foundation, the Royal Society acquired a crucial institutional role in organising and arbitrating scientific research. Yet what has often been overlooked is the element of evolution - even of trial and error - in the Society's development in its earliest years. This talk will explore the sometimes painful process by which the Society's founders discovered what functions this novel body could most usefully serve.
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Reading science through its regions: Cornwall in the nineteenth century
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jan 8, 2010
Is it helpful to consider the history of science in Britain through one of its regions? By considering one such region the English county of Cornwall this lecture argues that it is. A variety of economic, political and cultural forces acted on and through the region to produce a flourishing scientific scene there in the nineteenth century, including numerous scientific museums and regular exhibitions of local scientific and industrial innovations; the second-oldest geological society in Britain; and a Royal Society-funded meteorological observatory (as well as two nineteenth-century Presidents of the Royal Society). Its unique geology, natural history and antiquities attracted the attention of scientific luminaries such as Sir William Hooker, Sir Henry De la Beche and Sir John Gardner Wilkinson. More generally, it is argued that such a geographically-contextual approach highlights important processes that are otherwise missed in more conventional histories of science.
Simon Naylor is Senior Lecturer in Historical Geography at the University of Exeter's Cornwall Campus. He has just completed his latest book, Regionalizing Science: Placing Knowledges in Victorian England, which will be coming out in 2010.
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John Henslow, Cambridge University and the Education of Charles Darwin
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 27, 2009
Charles Darwin came to Cambridge University after a dismal year reading medicine at Edinburgh. At Cambridge he fell deeply under the influence of John Henslow, Professor of Botany, whose own vibrant research programme focussed on experimental studies of the nature of species. Such a close friendship grew between them that Darwin was known as "the man that walks with Henslow", and it was Henslow who recommended Darwin for the Beagle voyage. We will here explore the contribution of Henslow and his scientific colleagues in the University to the education of young Mr Darwin, and consider its lasting impact.
John Parker is Professor of Plant Cytogenetics at the University of Cambridge, Director of the Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Curator of the University's Herbarium.
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Darwin's Bards
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 13, 2009
Charles Darwin's ideas transformed the biological sciences, but they also transformed how we think about ourselves and the world around us. 150 years after the publication of 'On the Origin of Species', John Holmes explores how the great poets of the Victorian age from Alfred Tennyson to Thomas Hardy responded to its greatest scientist, and how their poems can still speak to us today.
John Holmes is a lecturer in the Department of English and American Literature at the University of Reading. He specialises in 19th and 20th century poetry, and is particularly interested in connections betweeen literature and science. His newest book is Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution (2009).
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The Foul of mouth and evil eyed
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 6, 2009
Francis Galton's scientific career was based on his fascination with statistics. He counted and measured everything from numbers of attractive women in different cities to the frequency people fidgeted in scientific meetings. However his most intensive research was devoted to human physical attributes such as height, chest width, arm strength and colour vision. At the same time as developing theories on inheritance of physical characteristics, he proffered suggestions about the improvement of the human race. This talk will concentrate on his work in the context of Victorian ideas about criminality.
Natasha McEnroe is the Museum Manager of the Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy and Curator of the Galton Collection at University College London. She has lectured widely, and co-edited a collection of essays entitled The Tyranny of Treatment: Samuel Johnson, His Friends and Georgian Medicine (British Art Journal, 2003).
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The Science of Common Things; Dr Melanie Keene
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Nov 2, 2009
Scientific explanations have often relied on common objects, from watches to grains of sand, to provide an understanding of the natural world. The use of familiar things to illustrate scientific theories was particularly prevalent and powerful in the mid-nineteenth century. In this talk we will see how many different household artefacts - from candles to cups of tea, pebbles to primroses, salt to see-saws - were used to instruct new audiences in the science of common things.
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Smashing species Joseph Hooker and Victorian science
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Oct 16, 2009
Joseph Dalton Hooker once described classifying plants and animals as exciting work, 'the species go smash smash every day'. Hooker was one of the nineteenth century's most powerful and influential men of science: director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew, President of the Royal Society and a close friend and key ally of Charles Darwin. In this engaging, illustrated talk Jim Endersby will show that understanding why Hooker was so keen to "smash" species, and how he did it, helps us understand much about Victorian science, especially why Darwin's ideas about species were both useful and dangerous to his friends and colleagues.
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The Leviathan of Parsonstown
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Oct 9, 2009
In 1845 William Parsons, the third Earl of Rosse, built the largest telescope in the world at his home, Birr Castle in Ireland. The combination of its extravagant ambition, uniqueness and inaccessibility brought to a head a problem that had run through the history of the reflecting telescope, where the foremost research instruments had been built by amateur instrument makers for their own ends. Lord Rosse fulfilled his ambition to have the world's largest telescope, but did he achieve his other aim, to bring the large reflector out of the sphere of the individual enthusiast and into mainstream of a shared astronomical practice?
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Kent's Cavern
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jun 12, 2009
Excavations from the 1820s to 1860s in Kent's Cavern (Torquay, Devon) played a major role in the establishment of deep roots for human antiquity, coinciding with the development and promulgation of Darwin's and Wallace's notion of evolution by means of natural selection. We review the history of investigations at the site in wider context, showing how the cave's archaeology challenged established dogma promulgated by Buckland, Cuvier and others, and came to be one of the most informative sites for Ice Age human behaviour in Britain.
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The Telescope at 400: a Satirical Journey
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 22, 2009
As it begins its fifth century, the telescope holds its own as an icon of scientific endeavour. Its status has not always been uncontested, however, since telescopes and their users have often found themselves on the wrong side of sharp-minded wits. As science suffered turbulent times, so the telescope could come under attack
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Marine Archaeology and 'Hunting the Beagle'
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 15, 2009
Maritime historian Dr Robert Prescott talks about his mission to locate the final resting place of Darwin's ship, the Beagle
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Transatlantic Scientific Communication in an Age of Revolution
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 8, 2009
This talk will examine how scientific knowledge was communicated between North America and Europe during a period of great social upheaval. Sociable fellowship, rather than technological developments, underpinned transatlantic communication of scientific knowledge. Joseph Banks FRS was a prime example: his world-wide friendships made him a human hub of transatlantic and intra-European scientific communication.
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Lord Rayleigh's Legacy
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 5, 2009
The private laboratories and equipment used by the Third and Fourth Barons Rayleigh (John William Strutt and his son Robert John Strutt) remain largely as they were when used by these great scientists. This lecture will take the audience on a virtual tour of the laboratories and describe some of the important experiments conducted there.
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The Information Business
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Apr 24, 2009
The intense cultural and commercial activity centred on London at the end of the seventeenth century attracted a variety of entrepreneurs. One of these was John Houghton, apothecary, commodity-broker and Fellow of the Royal Society. His interest in the overlapping spheres of business and ideas led to the publication of his most durable work the Collection for improvement of husbandry and trade (1692-1703). This weekly serial, with its mixed content of advertising and current information, will provide the focus for an investigation into the way public and private interest and the advancement of learning, could intersect in serial print.
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Rutherford and the Birth of Nuclear Physics
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Apr 17, 2009
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford interpreted the earlier experimental results of his students, Geiger and Marsden, as showing that at the centre of the atom there was a small, dense nucleus with a positive electric charge. This insight was to fundamentally change our understanding of the structure of the physical world and led to the birth of nuclear physics.
As we near the centenary of this historic scientific contribution, we will look at how this discovery came about, examine Rutherford's legacy and the important questions that remain in the field of nuclear physics a hundred years on.
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Sir Joseph Banks, Sir Humphry Davy
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Apr 3, 2009
How do individual lives illuminate an age? This talk will reflect on the relationship between biography and history, using two of Britain's greatest scientists as examples.
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The Linnean Society Library
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Mar 30, 2009
Founded in 1788, the Linnean Society is one of London's oldest learned institutions. Among other collections, the Society's Library preserves the manuscripts, books and correspondence of Carl Linnaeus, the father of modern plant and animal classification. Linnaeus's library gives fascinating insight into his life and work.
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The Georgian Star
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Mar 19, 2009
In the spring of 1781, William Herschel discovered the planet Uranus, using his homemade telescope in the back garden of his house at 19 New King Street, in Bath. For the world of astronomy, it was an astonishing find - the first new planet ever found. But Herschel himself considered it relatively unimportant compared with his true quest: to understand, with the help of his sister and collaborator Caroline, the very nature and evolution of the universe itself.
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Palmer's Penguins
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Feb 6, 2009
What can the daily lives of penguins tell us about Earth's changing climate? Science writer Meredith Hooper will talk about her work with American seabird ecologists as they investigated the links between declining numbers of Adelie penguins and the visible warming occuring along the Antarctic Peninsula.
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The Singular Life of Edward Heron-Allen FRS
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Feb 2, 2009
Having trained as a solicitor, Edward Heron-Allen (1861-1943) went on to write a definitive work on violin-making, lecture in America on palmistry, and publish science fiction and translations of Persian poetry. His work on the foraminifera (microscopic marine organisms) of the Sussex coast led to his election as a Fellow of the Royal Society.
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Spiderman
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jan 23, 2009
Dr Martin Lister (1638-1712), vice-president of the Royal Society and court physician, is best known as England's first arachnologist and conchologist. This talk will also address some of his lesser-known discoveries, including his invention of the histogram and the stratigraphic map.
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Taming Nature
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jan 16, 2009
This talk examines the career of Charles Darwin's neighbour, John Lubbock FRS, first Baron Avebury (1834-1914) banker, MP, anthropologist, and entomologist. He made significant contributions to the study of insects, and his achievements are said to have included taming a wasp, and teaching a dog to read.
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The Lisbon Catastrophe
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 28, 2008
The Lisbon earthquake, which took place on the morning of 1 November 1755, was Europe's greatest natural disaster. The earthquake was followed by a tsunami and fire, destroying much of Lisbon. This talk will reconstruct events of the day with the assistance of Royal Society archive material.
Download File - 49.5 MB
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Sir Hans Sloane and his library
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Nov 24, 2008
Sir Hans Sloane started collecting books when he was about 20 years old, and continued until his death at the age of 92. His collections of books, manuscripts and artefacts formed the basis of the British Museum and included some 40,000 printed volumes. By looking at what he acquired and how it was used we can learn about the man himself, his career and the intellectual and scientific circles in which he lived.
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Sir Isaac Newton
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Nov 13, 2008
Sir Isaac Newton spent much of his life investigating subjects we would not now think of as scientific, including alchemy and his own private theology. This talk will explore the links between the different areas of Newton's research.
Download File - 35.2 MB
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Sparkling Cider
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 7, 2008
James Crowden will talk about cider-making in the mid 17th century and the experiments which led to the evolution of the bottle-fermented sparkling process, otherwise known as the methode champenoise. Papers read to the Royal Society in 1662-63 show that the research work paid dividends many years before certain French champagne houses claim that Dom Perignon 'invented' the process.
Download File - 31.2 MB
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Prince Rupert
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Aug 1, 2008
Inventor, scientist and adventurer, Prince Rupert's signature appears on the first page of the Royal Society's Charter Book, and he shared with the Society his many inventions in military technology. In this talk Charles, Earl Spencer will discuss his recent biography of Prince Rupert, showing him to be far more than merely the dashing cavalier of legend.
Charles Spencer, author of 'Prince Rupert: the Last Cavalier'
Download File - 42.0 MB
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Christopher Wren and St Paul's Cathedral
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jul 25, 2008
This year sees the 300th anniversary of the topping out of St Paul's. This talk shows how the cathedral is a monument to a mathematician and scientist at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and looks at the changing career of England's foremost architect, already over 30 when he was appointed Royal Surveyor by Charles II.
Download File - 56.9 MB
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Ruth Belville
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jul 18, 2008
Astronomer John Belville, his wife and their daughter Ruth made a living selling Greenwich time to Londoners, setting a pocket watch by the Royal Observatory's clocks before carrying it around to subscribers. The scheme only ended in 1939 following the arrival of the speaking clock. This talk, by the author of a forthcoming book on the Belvilles, tells the surprising story of London's time carriers.
Download File - 52.1 MB
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The Brother Gardeners
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jul 11, 2008
The tale of how a group of passionate plant collectors, botanists and explorers turned Britain into a nation of gardeners. The cast includes Peter Collinson, who brought the American wilderness to British parks; botanists Carl Linnaeus and Daniel Solander; and Sir Joseph Banks, who turned Kew into a storehouse of Empire.
Download File - 34.4 MB
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Mortal Coil
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jul 4, 2008
A talk exploring the seventeenth-century fascination with life extension, including the speculations of Sir Francis Bacon and the early Fellows of the Royal Society, and tracing its influence on modern science and medicine including cryonics, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.
Download File - 44.5 MB
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Surveying the scene, engineering the machine
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jun 27, 2008
The designs of civil engineer John Smeaton (1724-92), including wind and water mills, steam engines, river navigations, canals and harbours, are among the Society's archival treasures. This talk examines the purpose of the drawings and the development of surveying and engineering draughtsmanship in the 18th century.
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Domesticating electricity
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Jun 19, 2008
The electrification of Britain at the turn of the 20th century inspired not only fascination and puzzlement but also fear and revulsion. This talk looks at the controversies about the nature and applications of electricity, especially at women's role in taming electric lighting to make it aesthetically suitable for domestic usage.
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Before the British Museum
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jun 13, 2008
A chance to take a guided tour of the Library's current exhibition, featuring fossils, lodestones and stuffed bird specimens from the Society's early museum. There will be short talks on how the collection began, Nehemiah Grew's influential catalogue, and the afterlife of the Repository following its transfer to the British Museum.
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Innovation's Heroes and Villains
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Jun 6, 2008
Mike Green, author of 'The Nearly Men', delves into the dark side of technological advance, looking at the bitter rivalries, tales of treachery and acts of deceit behind the inventions and scientific discoveries which defined the modern age.
Download File - 29.2 MB
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The Apothecaries and their garden
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 30, 2008
Chelsea Physic Garden was founded in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries. Find out how this unique garden has survived over the centuries, and how it is as relevant in today's environment as it was when it was created as an outdoor classroom for the apprentice apothecaries.
Download File - 42.0 MB
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Arabic in Britain
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 23, 2008
By the Society's foundation in 1660, Britain had become the European centre for the study of Arabic, the key to unlocking the influx of knowledge from the Arab and Islamic world. This talk, with a focus on astronomy, examines this interest in Arabic, highlighting the Arabic books and manuscripts in the Society's Library.
Download File - 49.0 MB
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Whose Darwin is the true Darwin?
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, May 16, 2008
Battles over Charles Darwin's legacy and the implications of his theory are central to current debates on evolution. Darwin's extensive correspondence shows, as nothing else can, how he arrived at his published views. Here, two Darwin experts talk about their current work on Darwin and evolution.
Download File - 23.7 MB
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Useful Bodies
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 13, 2008
Private anatomy teaching flourished in London in the second half of the 18th century. Many of its leading proponents were also Fellows of the Royal Society. This talk explores some of their stories, and the role of the Society in providing a public sanction for the noisome business of private dissection.
Download File - 38.0 MB
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'Lord Cable'
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 16, 2007
Sir William Thomson, known to later generations as Lord Kelvin, was the quintessential Victorian physicist. He was also a leading figure in the development of the submarine cable network that linked the far-flung British Empire. This talk will examine how closely telegraphy and physics were intertwined in Kelvin's career.
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Bird Stuffers and Snake Charmers
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Mar 7, 2008
Bird Stuffers and Snake Charmers, the Royal Society's involvement with India, with Rupert Baker, Royal Society Library, and Anna Winterbottom, Queen Mary, University of London
Download File - 27.4 MB
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Endurance and Discovery
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Mar 7, 2008
The Royal Society and its Fellows have been at the forefront of polar exploration for scientific purposes. This is an opportunity to find out more about these extraordinary expeditions and the resourceful pioneers who led them.
Download File - 26.1 MB
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Prints as process and product in the early Royal Society
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Mar 6, 2008
The early Royal Society was much concerned with engraving and printing - both as a technical discipline and a practical tool for illustration and publication - yet we seem to know little about the artists involved, not least with the most enduring images of the Society's early work, the plates from Hooke's Micrographia.
Download File - 37.3 MB
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Rescuing Ramsden from the archives
Author: The Royal Society
Thu, Mar 6, 2008
There has never been a full biography of Jesse Ramsden, arguably London's finest 18th century scientific instrument maker. Now, drawing on archives in UK and Europe, including those of the Royal Society, Ramsden's life at his great Piccadilly workshop is brought to light in a new book.
Download File - 46.4 MB
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"Dr Livingstone I presume"
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Mar 5, 2008
David Livingstone FRS, missionary, explorer, doctor and natural historian, was a prolific correspondent. A team of experts is now publishing his letters online, including those in the Royal Society's archives. This illustrated talk from the team describes Livingstone's adventures and this exciting new project.
Download File - 41.9 MB
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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Royal Society
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
Royal Society luminaries such as Sir Joseph Banks PRS and John Lindley FRS were vital in establishing plant science at Kew. All but two of Kew's directors have been Fellows, and Kew's scientific progress has long been supported by the Society. This talk tells the story of this ongoing relationship.
Download File - 28.6 MB
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An Inquisitive Age
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
The Royal Society began with a group of men who were interested in natural phenomena and wanted to understand how their world worked - but they were not trained scientists. This talk will explore some of the lesser known aspects of their research programme, featuring carts with legs, monstrous births, and showers of fish from the heavens. Presented by Dr Felicity Henderson, King's College London
Download File - 25.6 MB
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Balloon Madness
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
When balloons were invented, there was a lively debate about their possible uses. This talk introduces the spectrum of meanings that became attached to balloons, and shows how natural philosophers vied with adventurers to explore and understand the regions of air.
Download File - 55.1 MB
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Robert FitzRoy FRS
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Nov 2, 2007
John Gribbin is the author of more than a hundred books of popular science, including FitzRoy: the remarkable story of Darwin's Captain and the invention of the weather forecast'. In this talk, he discusses FitzRoy's career as captain of HMS Beagle and as a pioneering meteorologist.
Download File - 30.0 MB
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Robert Hooke
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
A fascinating look at the disorganised paper trail left by Robert Hooke, the Royal Society's first Curator of Experiments, and at the efforts of contemporary historians to piece together his paperwork and restore his legacy.
Download File - 83.8 MB
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Professor John Polkinghorne: Exchanges in science and religion
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, May 08, 2007
For 25 years, John Polkinghorne was a theoretical physicist, working on theories of elementary particles. He resigned his professorial chair to study for the Church of England ministry and was ordained an Anglican priest in 1982. In 2002 he was awarded the Templeton Prize for his contributions to research at the interface between science and religion.
Download File - 58.2 MB
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Hot topics: science policy and the history of climate change science
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Jan 31, 2007
Martin Carr and Richard Heap from the Royal Society staff tell the story of climate change and global warming.
Download File - 82.2 MB
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Prince of Scientists
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
Henry Dale was one of the outstanding medical researchers of the 20th century, and served both as President of the Royal Society and Chair of the Wellcome Trust. This talk focuses on the man, his work and the important changes at the Royal Society during his presidential term
Download File - 40.0 MB
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Into the blue
Author: The Royal Society
Tue, Jan 29, 2008
Rupert Baker, Library Manager of the Royal Society looks at travel and expedition related stories using RS archive material.
Download File - 27.0 MB
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Lisa Jardine in conversation with Michael Frayn
Author: The Royal Society
Mon, Nov 27, 2006
Lisa Jardine, acclaimed writer, historian and critic quizzes Michael Frayn over some of the conceptual questions that have been the driving force behind many of his novels and plays.
Download File - 65.1 MB
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Bill Bryson - A short history of nearly everything
Author: The Royal Society
Wed, Jun 28, 2006
A 2005 lecture by popular author Bill Bryson. We welcome your feedback on this Podcast to webmanager@royalsociety.org
Download File - 37.0 MB
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Why creationism is wrong and evolution is right
Author: The Royal Society
Fri, Mar 7, 2008
Many biologists are worried by a recent and unexpected return of an argument based on belief by the certainty, untestable and unsupported by evidence, that life did not evolve but appeared by supernatural means. Worldwide, more people believe in creationism than in evolution. Why do no biologists agree? Steve Jones will talk about what evolution is, about new evidence that men and chimps are close relatives and about how we are, nevertheless, unique and why creationism does more harm to religion than it does to science.
Download File - 65.4 MB
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