Gresham College Lectures

Inigo Jones is the architect best-known for the Banqueting House on Whitehall, one of the icons of British state architecture. He is less well known for the domestic buildings, the ‘architecture of necessity’ commissioned by the early Stuart monarchs and their consorts, most of which have been demolished and forgotten. New research into Jones's work for the early Stuarts throws new light on a...

The “singularity theorems” of the 1960s demonstrated that large enough celestial bodies, or collections of such bodies, would, collapse gravitationally, to “singularities”, where the equations and assumptions of Einstein’s general relativity cannot be mathematically continued. Such singularities are expected to lie deep within what we now call black holes. Similar arguments (largely by Stephen Haw...

How should companies raise money?  This lecture will look at both debt (bank loans and bonds) and equity (shares given to other founders, or sold on the stock market). It will analyse how a company should choose between debt and equity and explain how many factors that companies – and even highly-paid investment banks – focus on are actually irrelevant. It will explain how financial decisions, sto...

By the later eighteenth century, Protestant countries’ empires were spreading across the globe but Protestant churches were wriggling free of state control. What were the lessons from the early history of the missionary movement, and how did they underpin the wave of imperialism that followed? The missions’ later success depended on their increasing freedom from political control and their readine...

How can life form in the Universe, and what are the necessary ingredients for habitability so that planets can sustain life? Can we expect life elsewhere in the solar system, or on exo-planets?  This lecture offers a broader perspective from astrobiology, astrochemistry, and astrophysics on the habitability or otherwise of other planets beyond Planet Earth. A lecture by Professor Katherine Blundel...

The conflict in Ukraine – and earlier events like Brexit - led prominent asset managers such as BlackRock to declare the “end of globalisation.” Where is globalisation headed? This talk will take a supply chain perspective on globalisation: why we buy from or sell to far off places and build global supply chains to get the goods from raw material suppliers to manufacturers, and eventually to consu...

Spinning things are strange. Why does a spinning top stand up? Why doesn't a rolling wheel fall over? How does a falling cat always manage to land on its feet? How can the Hubble Space Telescope turn around in space? How do ice-skaters spin so fast?  Taking a look at gyroscopes, this lecture explores the common threads that link all spinning things. The law of Conservation of Angular Momentum...

The Internet and enhanced tools of digitalisation and communication have given opportunities to investigative journalists undreamed of even 10 years ago, and globalisation has connected the newshounds and whistleblowers of every continent.  From Latin-America to Nigeria, from India to Poland, courageous men and women are exposing problems and holding the powerful to account and in some cases, coll...

Modern humans evolved in Africa and successfully colonised the globe only in the last 100,000 years or so, a feat made possible by cultural and genetic adaptation. Human habitats differ dramatically in climate, available foods or pathogens, and genetic adaptation was mediated both by mutation and by interbreeding with archaic humans such as Neanderthals and Denisovans.  Besides representing a mark...

What does Natural Prosperity look like?  In this lecture we envision a new, more equitable future where wellbeing and nature-based solutions take the place of growth at any cost. Growth has almost vanished in industrialised countries since the global financial crisis of 2008.  By breaking free from growth, a new economy based on natural prosperity can contribute to our survival and success in futu...

Early computers were either designed to do one thing or, if they were programmable, they would be loaded-up with the program, it would run, and then a new program would be run. But a modern computer gives the appearance of doing multiple things at once.  This lecture shows that in reality it is a supreme juggling act and, like a plate-spinning act, should be accompanied by The Sabre Dance amazemen...

In the Commonwealth Caribbean, final appeals were traditionally heard by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, or ‘Her Majesty in Council’. Some islands have now replaced the Privy Council with the Caribbean Court of Justice as their highest court. The choice of highest court remains a controversial political issue in the Caribbean. While the Privy Council has deep colonial and imperial roo...

The beautiful sine wave turns out to have a huge number of practical applications, from the motion of springs, to waves in the sea, to sound waves, light waves and more. It is curious that the function which defines the sine wave, sin(x), comes from comparing the lengths of sides in right-angled triangles – just about the least curvy things you could imagine.  How does that concept result in the l...

In the aftermath of the Soviet war victory, ideological control was tightened again, contrary to expectations. The six leading Soviet composers (including Prokofiev, Shostakovich, Myaskovsky and Khachaturian) were censured and humiliated by a Party Resolution against 'formalism'.  This is a story of necessary retreat and compromise, but also of resilience and survival, when even under gr...

How do you value stocks? Finance textbooks argue that you should look at their dividends. But many stocks don’t pay dividends, and even if they do, it’s hard to forecast what they’ll be in the future. And newspapers talk about a stock’s 'price-to-earnings' ratio which seems nothing to do with dividends.  This lecture will explore the essentials of stock valuation, explain what causes sto...

This lecture looks at the very optimistic picture of trends in health around the world. Childhood deaths and the diseases of young adults are falling rapidly. Scientific advances are transforming the major chronic diseases and cancer. In low, middle and high income countries, health is improving through to old age. There are some major exceptions, such as dementia, but the extraordinary advances i...

Abstinence from sex is a requirement for many people seeking a spiritual life. In the U.S., abstinence-only education has been officially endorsed since 1981, despite the fact that America has the highest level of teen-pregnancies in the industrialized world. In more recent years, self-proclaimed 'Asexuals' have insisted that they have a distinct sexual identity. They have become targets...

Pope Alexander VII did more for Rome than any other Pope when in 1655 he employed the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini to reshape the city. Already celebrated as the greatest artist of his age, with Alexander, Bernini became part of one of the greatest artistic double acts in history, festooning Rome's historic centre with the sculptures, fountains and buildings that make it one of the world&apo...

Although life is probably widespread in the universe, our pale blue dot, Earth, is the only known place harbouring intelligent life. Even if we manage to stave off extinction by climate change, avoid a nuclear apocalypse and the dangers of runaway AI, biological life on our planet will eventually come to an end in about 5 billion years’ time. What are the astrophysical dangers to life on Earth, an...

With conspiracy theories and disinformation on the rise in both media and politics, is our democracy at risk? We may lose trust in society, in the institutions that inform us, and, ultimately, in the democratic process. Our sense of responsibility for the everyday information we share may diminish. Deceitful politicians may escape scrutiny by claiming that truths are false, falsehoods are true, an...

Early Protestant empires in Asia – in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India, Taiwan and elsewhere – brought missionaries with them. Like their Catholic predecessors, they learned that winning converts was formidably difficult, especially in empires that were principally commercial.  As this lecture will show, some concluded that the effort was futile; others grew increasingly coercive; but others still bega...

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...