Gresham College Lectures

The very young and very elderly are particularly susceptible to many infections and for many infections, age will predict how likely someone is to die once infected. The immediate and long-term effects of an infection changes throughout our life course. Some infections which if caught as a child are usually relatively trivial are likely to be much more severe in young adults including mumps and ch...

There is much in the universe we will never know, and it is equally certain that we will never know all that we do not know. This dilemma has not stopped cosmologists, philosophers and even theologians from exploring and going beyond the limits of space and time. A lecture by Joseph Silk, Gresham Professor of Astronomy 22 May 2019 The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are availab...

In recent years, multiple space missions have been launched. Many have set out across our galaxy to explore other systems and planets, capturing people's imaginations and helping us to understand more about the origins of the universe. But there are also a myriad of space missions and platform that are sending data back to earth that are telling us about how earth is changing. Today the earth...

Sergei Prokofiev's War and Peace (1953) was an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel begun during WWII. He saw it as a personal interpretation of the novel, but as soon as it went forward for production, the Soviet authorities realised that this was the perfect opportunity for creating a rousing epic wartime drama. A succession of cultural officials left their imprint on the work, requiring Prok...

The origin of life is one of the biggest questions in science, but until recently it was, experimentally, a question in chemistry. Now, gene sequences and a better understanding of cell growth under extreme conditions are giving insights from biology. These point to hydro-thermal vent environments as 'incubators' that could drive growth in a similar way to cells at the origin of life. Pr...

Touch is central to the performance of medicine. Traditionally, doctors depended on touch to diagnose illness. Revolutions in imaging technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence seem to reduce the need for physical examination. Yet touch is not only about gathering information but is how we express compassion and care. This lecture considers how 'gnostic' touch (identifying...

The word Romanticism makes us think of mountain tops and stormy seas, but the younger generation of English Romantics (above all, John Keats) were Londoners through and through. They were even mocked as 'the Cockney School of Poetry'. Jonathan Bate will track Keats to Hampstead and tell of the extraordinary circle of writers - opium-eater Thomas De Quincey, essayist Charles Lamb, master-...

Professor Wilks will discuss the argument that 'superintelligent' AI may turn against us, as Hawking and Bostrom have warned. It will be argued that these worries misrepresent the achievements and potential of AI, and that the ethical dilemmas of AI will be deeper and more challenging than just managing idleness due to automation, or how to blame an automated car in a crash. They will in...

It's a tough time to be a listener. Our present-day cultures of listening are radically fragmented, as our time and attention are fractalised into bits of information. What's the future of listening? What will happen to the ways we give attention to music in the future? Our conclusion might be that an expanded definition of listening - an active, participative, engaged listening! - can s...

This series has argued that the origins of modern secularism lie in the age of the Renaissance. This last lecture will track that legacy down to the present. From Tom Paine through Bakunin to modern humanism and anti-Nazism, religion has not collapsed intellectually. Instead, religious impulses - defiance of unwelcome moral authority, the quest for ever-deeper truths, a readiness to judge churches...

'Go to the Exchange, crave gold as you intend.'' (William Haughton, Englishmen for My Money, 1598). Sir Thomas Gresham's first great contribution to the life of London was the Royal Exchange, the purpose-built merchants' bourse which opened in 1567. Why did Gresham finance and build it? What did Londoners (and others) do there? And what does the Exchange tell us about Gres...

There is far more to piano accompaniment than meets the ear or eye. Vocal celebrities are reliant on an accompanist's skills in indisputably great music composed for an equal partnership of voice and piano, and yet the hard-working pianist's public profile seldom matches that of the singer. Skills developed over many years are often accorded faint praise and small fees. Graham Johnson ex...

What happens when doctors and parents cannot agree on whether a child should be given experimental medical treatment? Why is there any question mark over a parent's right to decide if medical treatment for their child continues? From the parents of Ashya King who successfully secured proton beam therapy for their son to the despair surrounding baby Charlie Gard and his life-limiting genetic d...

The newly discovered Salvator by Leonardo, the world's most costly picture, is one of his most notable creations, in which he used his 'science of art' to transform a stock subject into a profound expression of the ineffability of the divine. We will look at the remarkable story of its discovery, its conservation and scientific examination, the research into how it works as an image...

Pollution is a much more complex problem than many realise and cannot be resolved solely through global and regional agreements. Pollution is closely connected with behavioural and technology choices, production and consumption practices, industrial processes and pricing policies, financial and business sector orientation and a culture of consumerism and irresponsibility to the environment and imp...

Much has happened in the 500 years since the birth of Thomas Gresham, and mathematics is no exception. Most mathematicians were then in awe of the Greeks and felt little had been done since. But the start of modern mathematics soon followed, marked by the solution of the cubic equation. Mathematics has grown explosively since then and we are now in an age of great discovery. The last 500 years of...

Recent advances in medical science have brought complex ethical dilemmas, particularly around the beginning of human lives (abortion, embryo research, IVF, gene therapy, stem cells) and its ending (switching off ventilators, persistent vegetative state (PVS) and 'dying with dignity' or assisted suicide). Although none of these topics occurs directly in the New Testament, references to &a...

Since the financial crisis, there has been a strong view that the financial sector has little benefit for society. The stock market is not a net supplier of capital - as much money is spent on share buybacks as is raised from new issuance. Moreover, most stock market trading is speculative side-bets between investors, with no new money being raised by firms. This talk will show that stock market t...

Volcanoes provide many natural resources from which society can benefit. Diamonds and most of the world's copper are mined from eroded extinct volcanoes while many active volcanoes offer the possibility of extracting huge amounts of geothermal energy. The volcanic processes that transport diamonds to the Earth's surface and enrich copper beneath volcanoes, show how volcanoes can be a maj...

Text is everywhere. From tweets to the gigantic records of governments, machine processing of text is now subtle and pervasive. We can automatically identify authors of works, look for disease within tweets and even construct chatbots which can convince some people that these machines are human. In this lecture, we provide a brief history of text processing and look towards the future when the com...

Tudor London is variously reported as a squalid seething mass of humanity choking on its own filth and fumes, and as a delightful garden where babbling brooks and sweet flowers delighted the senses of people such as Elizabeth I, Shakespeare and Erasmus. Drawing on evidence from contemporary maps, paintings and writings, and modern environmental science, the lecture will offer a 'virtual'...

This lecture will consider the current reality of AI in education and its transformative potential. Professor Luckin will introduce what we mean by the term AI and how the development of increasingly smart technologies in the workplace and home requires us to change how and what we teach and learn. It will be explained how AI is already supporting the teaching and learning process, with speculatio...

In the 50 years since the hospice movement started, lessons from research have revolutionised care of the dying in the UK and in many places around the world. Yet the cruel myth that opioids shorten the lives of those with severe pain from cancer and other diseases leaves many denied the treatment they deserve. Those watching the person they love die carry the memory for the rest of their lives. T...

Location shooting was a feature of 'new wave' film around the world in the 1960s. In Britain, it meant that British filmmakers broke out of the studio to find new subjects among the young, fashionable and disadvantaged, seen in their natural habitats - not only in the North and Midlands, but in unfamiliar parts of London. A lecture by Ian Christie, Visiting Professor in the History of Fi...

The Protestant Reformation set out to purge Christianity of error. But once you have started, how do you know when to stop? Some radicals tore up layer upon layer of tradition in the tireless search for deeper truths, proving their faith by their refusal to believe. This lecture will track these radical quests and show how they could lead to positions like those of Baruch Spinoza or Thomas Hobbes:...