Gresham College Lectures

Asthma, an intermittent disease, is the commonest lung disease in the UK. The second is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), now the 4th leading cause of death globally. In both a combination of environmental and genetic factors are important, although for COPD smoking is the biggest risk factor. This lecture will consider trends and advances in these two diseases, and the chronic genetic...

In 2017, the Government paved the way for the civil and family courts of England and Wales to provide 'innovative methods of resolving disputes.' New legislation will underpin a £1bn investment in digitising the courts, that may see defendants convicted by computer and disputes settled by software. Tribunals dealing with benefits claims will also be reformed. But how effective are online...

Human beings often have generous views of themselves - not always easy to defend. Massive scientific advances are sometimes used for destructive purposes. This lecture looks at our changing understanding of ourselves, focussing on Charles Darwin's theory of human origins and the religious, scientific and ethical questions raised. Does a tendency to violence reflect our evolutionary past? If s...

After the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, many artists and intellectuals in China saw the overthrow of 'tradition' as the means to rescue the nation from poverty and backwardness. Rejecting what thev saw as irrelevant avant-garde artistic trends, they looked to the art of the Soviet Union and anti-fascism in Western Europe, as well as to a more 'authentic' trad...

Euler's pioneering equation, the 'most beautiful equation in mathematics', links the five most important constants in the subject: 1, 0, π, e and i. Central to both mathematics and physics, it has also featured in a criminal court case, on a postage stamp, and appeared twice in The Simpsons. So what is this equation - and why is it pioneering? The transcript and downloadable version...

There is an apparent conflict between the increase in technology in medicine and the importance of a relationship between patient and doctor. This Valentine's Day lecture considers the importance of that relationship. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/does-a-good-bedside-manner-...

Online voting in local and national elections could be more convenient, greatly increase voter turnout and deliver results within a few minutes of the polls closing. Some countries have adopted online voting and some have regarded it as extremely dangerous for democracy. What are the facts? The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http...

Robotics is another of HM Government's 'eight great technologies'. Is it possible that in a few years we might have machines with artificial intelligence? In this lecture I will describe the mathematics of machine learning and explain its applications to robotics. In particular I will show how the modern ideas of deep learning allow a robot to make sense of the world it exists in, i...

National Parks were designated to protect some of the world's most loved landscapes from being eaten away by industrial and housing development. But Britain's National Parks are exploited by intensive agriculture and sucked dry of their water for neighbouring cities. They sustain non-native invasive species and unlike National Parks elsewhere in the world, they are not 'natural park...

In 1643 an English landowner, Sir Ralph Verney, fled to France in the depths of the Civil War. He settled in Blois and, while there, amassed a vast archive that is still unpublished. The letters Verney kept, and his financial accounts, show that almost every member of his family learned the guitar. These records provide a wealth of information about the music they played, the guitars they bought a...

Despite the explosion of genetic information in recent years, we have surprisingly little insight into the peculiar history of life on our planet. Most genetic variation - natural experiments in evolution - is found in simple bacteria, yet they have barely changed over four billion years. No complex animals or plants are composed of bacterial cells. Why not? Why did complex cells only arise once i...

Computer bugs, reported in heart pacemaker software and many other devices, are but one example of the risks that IT systems can create for patients. The extent of the problem of software bugs in the medical arena, and elsewhere, suggest an increasing number of avoidable deaths and injuries in UK hospitals. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham Coll...

The campaign to achieve the parliamentary vote for women (6 February 1918) took 52 years, from 1866 to 1918. During that time women and their male supporters employed both parliamentary and extra-parliamentary tactics, ranging from the presentation of petitions to the detonation of bombs. The campaign will be examined, concentrating on the work of the constitutional suffragists as well as on the m...

Do the courts respect diversity or punish it when it comes to parenthood? What disabilities does it encounter? How can the learning disabled parent ensure their voice is heard in court? What to do when the wish to parent might not be matched by an ability to parent? What does the justice system do to protect the rights of the disabled person to be a parent, and of the child to be adequately parent...

When Lenin died in 1924, he had effected a temporary stabilisation of the Soviet order. But many political, economic, social and international trends grew more worrisome to Bolsheviks who still wished to preserve 'the gains of October'. The solution that the Politburo adopted at Stalin's suggestion was a comprehensive revolutionary offensive. It increased the powers of the state ove...

View the sky through an x-ray telescope and the conception of the universe changes dramatically. Black holes are best seen in x-rays, because impinging gas collides with the black hole at near light speed, resulting in intense x-ray and gamma ray emission. Optical light also plays a role in discovering black holes since the most luminous objects in the universe emit bursts of gamma radiation which...

The Labour Party was formed in 1900 as a coalition between trade unions and socialist intellectuals with the aim of securing representation for the working class in parliament. During the First World War, Labour was transformed from a pressure group to a party of government, and in 1945 it formed its first majority government, which carried out an extensive programme of social reform. Today, howev...

Housing represents the main asset class held by UK households and we shall try to understand why it is held as such a large share of assets. We shall then outline whether this choice has other knock on effects in the economy such as labour and social mobility. And what the case is for changes the tax treatment of housing. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from t...

Professor Steve Jones will consider sunshine and its effects on health, on sleep, on memory and more: and why today's twilight world of tablets and smart-phones is taking us back to the middle ages. The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/here-comes-the-sun-sunshine-and-its-effects-on...

William Shakespeare made his name as a poet before he became famous as a playwright. His erotic poem Venus and Adonis was the most popular work of literature of the Elizabethan Age, while its dark companion piece The Rape of Lucrece set the mould for Shakespeare's exploration of the tragic consequences of sexual desire turning to violence. Jonathan Bate will show how Shakespeare developed the...

Isaac Newton saw his demonstration of the regularity of the universe as having great religious significance. Newton's ideas were initially seen as very supportive of religion; yet within 50 years, they were being seen in a very different light. So what are the religious, aesthetic, and scientific implications of Newton's approach? The latest scholarship will be considered in order to unp...

A sustainable solution to the UK's housing crisis, or a flimsy excuse for high-profile, profitable construction activity in the green belt? Architects may love them, but most ecologists are sceptical. Eco-town proposals have attracted controversy, with local residents alleging that their environment will be irrevocably damaged with the arrival of sprawling new estates, thousands of cars and t...

The heroine of Charles Gounod's French opera Sapho (1851) sings her last aria O My Immortal Lyre on a Greek cliff before plunging to her death. Sappho, the most famous poet of the 'Lyric Age' of Greece, in the 7th to 6th centuries BC, addressed passionate love poems to women. This lecture uncovers what we know about the 'real Sappho', an aristocrat who lived between 630 an...

During the Middle Ages London was home to one of the largest and richest merchant communities in the world. These men and their families invested heavily in fine architecture both for business and pleasure. Simon Thurley, Visiting Professor of the Built Environment unearths the lost mercantile buildings of medieval London and shows how influential they were. The transcript and downloadable version...

The courts of James I and his son Charles I were more cosmopolitan than their Elizabethan forebears. Many courtiers had now visited the Continent in early adulthood with a tutor, mostly after a period of residence at a university. The guitar at the English court entered a new and very lively phase, as sketched in a scenery design by Inigo Jones and played in a masque by a leading court musician. O...