Gresham College Lectures

Recent studies from around the world show insects are disappearing fast. If this continues, this will have profound consequences for mankind and for our planet, for insects provide a myriad of vital ‘ecosystem services’, such as pollination, pest control, decomposition and recycling.  This lecture looks at the causes of this crisis, at possible solutions including more sustainable farming systems,...

England’s earliest chair of mathematics was that of Gresham College, founded in 1597, but who came next?  The earliest University-based mathematics professorship was Oxford’s Savilian Chair of Geometry, founded in 1619.  This illustrated lecture outlines the 400-year history of this Chair, from its beginnings to the present day, and features such figures as Henry Briggs, John Wallis, Edmond Halley...

It seems that fakes are everywhere – very few domains of social life are exempt from concerns about fakes and a general ‘crisis of authenticity’. While fakes are often considered worthless, this talk argues that fakes can signal blind spots in our understanding of health-related matters.  This lecture draws on examples from the art world and discussion of fakes in films and what these can tell us...

In this lecture we are going to look at how the supply chains in a wellbeing economy bring together local production of food and stewardship of nature. This approach, already followed by many indigenous peoples, has the potential to radically reshape supply chains across the world.  Using examples from all around the world, the lecture will explore how placing nature’s value at the centre of produ...

As we build on the economic recovery from COVID-19, we need to put our people and our purpose at the heart of financial and professional services to rebuild a more sustainable and inclusive economy - investing in better. Capitalising on client, customer and consumer demand for purpose driven businesses, the Lord Mayor’s Gresham Lecture 2022 will look at how we drive positive impact across the econ...

The tribulations of WWII (the “Great Patriotic War”) prompted a temporary liberalisation within Soviet culture. Images of horror and grief, formerly unacceptable, found their way into the wartime music of Soviet composers. The debate over Shostakovich’s Eighth Symphony showed how the boundaries of Socialist Realism could be stretched, but also where the limits lay.  The lecture will also discuss s...

Conic sections – the curves made by slicing through cones at various angles – were studied by the ancient Greeks, but because of their useful properties, have many real-world uses. Planets have elliptical orbits, projectiles move in parabolas, and cooling towers have hyperbolic cross-sections. But did you know that one of the most important curves in economics is a hyperbola? Or that ellipses are...

‘Hyper-globalisation’ and the power of finance culminated in the global financial crisis of 2008 that was potentially as severe as the Great Depression. The outcome was not public spending but austerity that hit the poor and Quantitative Easing that benefited the assets of the rich. The result was inequality and precarity, with barely any improvement in the standard of living for most by the time...

Integral transforms are the most rarefied of analyses – only used by a subset of engineers and computer scientists; laboured over by many an undergraduate, usually with the accompanying moans; yet every computer, every electronic circuit is an incomprehensible jumble of wires without knowledge of integral transforms.  The most common, the Fourier transform, is estimated to be the algorithm that is...

Organised disinformation about the Covid-19 crisis has degraded public understanding of the crisis and threatened the reputation of credible vaccines and health policy.  This talk looks at the broad structures and recent history of computational propaganda - the use of algorithms, automation and human curation to distribute misleading information over social media.  Dr Howard reviews the latest ev...

The scherzo (‘joke’) emerged in the vocal music of Monteverdi and became integrated into the string quartets and symphonies of Beethoven. Haydn and Mozart loved to fool around with their audiences and Scott Bradley’s scores for Tom & Jerry are integral parts of the comedic presentation. Clever composers have pranked our emotions for hundreds of years, from slapstick and belly laughs to gallows...

With the development of new vitrification techniques, egg freezing has become a viable option for women to protect and extend their fertility. Being able to control when to have children can help achieve life-goals. But there are downsides.  This lecture explains the science of fertility and egg freezing, the impact of child-bearing and rearing on women’s educational and employment prospects, and...

Many people are inspired by stories of individual litigants, often with few financial resources and little assistance, taking on large corporations in court and fighting for their rights.  This lecture will explore some of those stories, from Thomas Cook to the islanders in Barbuda, and from the perspective of a lawyer who has represented many Davids against many Goliaths. A lecture by Leslie Thom...

Are villains cardboard characters? If so, why do we enjoy them so much?  Drawing examples from film and TV drama, as well as from popular fiction, this lecture will try to explain the satisfaction of villainy for the audience. Using the novels of Wilkie Collins and Thomas Hardy, it will look at the development of the villain in nineteenth-century fiction; and at examples of contemporary literary n...

What is dementia? Is it inevitable as we live longer that more of us will suffer dementia, or could we live longer lives without getting it?  There are hundreds of different causes of dementia, and this lecture will look at how they are diagnosed and where we are with treatment and prevention. What can you do to reduce your risks of getting dementia, and – if you do get it- what’s the best treatme...

How can new worlds be discovered, and how many exo-planets might be out there? What does today’s technology in astronomical observatories now enable, and what is it that holds us back from finding what is actually out there? What hinders us from pushing forwards the frontiers of space science? A lecture by Katherine Blundell OBE The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available...

Dr Nathan Robinson’s video of him removing a plastic drinking straw from a sea turtle’s nose went viral in 2015. He has since been developing new ways of using technology to gain insights into the secret lives of marine creatures, including capturing the first footage of a live giant squid in US waters and mounting cameras on shells of sea turtles.  This lecture will give a practical guide to buil...

Science fiction’s most frequent alternative to human is 'alien', another rich imaginative resource with which to think about what makes us human.  This lecture will include reflections on various aliens, from H.G. Wells Selenites, to Octavia Butler’s Oankali, the genetic traders who link the novels of her Xenogenesis trilogy who are imagined as both saving and enslaving humanity. Whether...

The law has been used to entrench and uphold racial prejudice, most infamously in South Africa during the apartheid years, but also in the United States in the period up to the mid-twentieth century. In South Africa and the southern states of America, judges showed themselves willing to use the law to uphold and promote white supremacy.  This lecture will discuss the uneasy interplay between the c...

Monogamy is a hotly contested practice. In many cis-gender marriages, engaging in sexual intercourse with a non-spouse is regarded as a serious betrayal. But during some periods in history, it was not only accepted but expected. 'Philanderers' are now portrayed as suffering from 'sex addiction'. What do these shifts reveal about gender and sexual relations? Has the proliferatio...

Some diseases are spread almost exclusively by touch or through the skin or mucus membranes. These include Ebola, several parasitic diseases such as hookworm, strongyloides and scabies and some bacterial and fungal infections. Other diseases like COVID-19 and influenza are mainly transmitted via other routes but use touch as a secondary method of spread. This has implications for controlling these...

A good night's sleep is anything but quiet: a myriad of processes occupy our brains, crucial for every aspect of our waking lives. Our increased understanding of the neuroscience of sleep – that sleep may not affect the brain in its entirety – provides a window into the human experiences of sleep deprivation, lucid dreaming, spiritual visitations and a range of clinical sleep disorders, such...

Philanthropy has long played a key role in our communities on local, national, and global scales. Yet if we have often assumed that giving is good, we must also step back and ask, “good for whom?” In recent years, more voices are raising questions and critically engaging philanthropy and the notions of the public good.  In short, how do we know when philanthropy does the public good? In partnershi...

Psychosis is a mental state where people experience a 'different' world. If, as clinical psychiatry and neuroscience suggests, it is our 'default mental state' why isn't everyone psychotic? Psychosis does not arise de novo; external sensory input and cognition actively inhibit its expression. It is important to understand: how thin the boundary is between sanity and madnes...

The path traced out by a given point on the rim of a circle as you roll it along a straight line is a beautiful curve called a cycloid, whose appeal to mathematicians has had it dubbed “the Helen of Geometry”. This curve is known in geometry as a roulette, which is a curve you get by rolling one curve along another, and there are many more with an amazing range of applications, from clockwork toys...