Expert Lectures

cross-posted from: https://lemdro.id/post/33530489

Many historians have thought that U.S. Navy funding of oceanography paved the way for plate tectonic theory. By funding extensive investigations of the deep ocean, Navy support enabled scientists to discover and understand sea-floor magnetic stripes, the association of the deep trenches with deep-focus earthquakes, and other key features. Historian of science and geologist Naomi Oreskes presents a different view: the major pieces of plate tectonic theory were in place in the 1930s, and military secrecy in fact prevented the coalescence of plate tectonics, delaying it for three decades.

Naomi Oreskes is Professor of the History of Science and Affiliated Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Harvard University. She has worked on studies of geophysics, climate change and the history of science. She sits on the board of US based not-for-profit organisations the National Center for Science Education and Climate Science Legal Defense Fund. She is a distinguished speaker and has published 10 books, including Science on a Mission and The Big Myth.

As soon as inequality in resources tipped over into inequality in power, Goliath-like states and empires, with vast bureaucracies and militaries like our own, began carving up and dominating the globe.

What brought them down? Compounding inequality and concentrations of power, says Luke Kemp, research associate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

According to Kemp — nicknamed "Dr. Doom" by some of his colleagues — we now live in a single, global Goliath. In this talk, recorded at BESI on September 30, 2025, Kemp explore the ways growth-obsessed, extractive institutions like the fossil fuel industry, Big Tech, and military-industrial complexes rule our world and produce new ways of annihilating our species, from climate change to nuclear war.

In what ways do unresolved questions in physics and mathematics shape the possibilities of quantum research? What can the history of semiconductors teach us about the future of quantum research? How do government investments shape research priorities? And what happens when scientific breakthroughs encounter markets?

How is mathematical knowledge recorded and preserved across generations? Contrary to the idea that mathematics itself is somehow ‘permanent’, in this talk we will explore heritage-making in mathematics, that is the people, institutions, and material objects that can give mathematical ideas longevity. We will explore the heritage-making found in two very different types of French nineteenth-century libraries: those of famous mathematicians and those of secondary schools. We will especially focus on how the recording – and forgetting – of mathematical ideas is influenced by their publishing, political, and intellectual contexts. This lecture was recorded by Professor Caroline Ehrhardt on 8th October 2025 at Barnard’s Inn Hall, London.

Jo is Britain’s first female fast-jet pilot and later a transformative leader specialising in generative AI. Jo will address the importance of The Power of Connection 2025, examining how trust, collaboration and innovation must be harnessed to build resilience and lasting change, in the fragmented world we see today.

What does it mean to “see” atoms? How have we reached a stage in which it is possible to perform microscopy down to the atomic level? And what do we learn by doing this? The fascinating story that will explain this involves a question that has long been debated in Oxford, dating back to the seventeenth century when Robert Hooke became one of the first practitioners of the optical microscope: is light a particle or a wave? In the twentieth century, physicists asked the same question of electrons. The modern microscopy techniques that will be described utilise an effect called tunnelling, in which particles can behave like ghostlike entities, passing through solid walls. It’s often described as a counter-intuitive quantum mechanical effect, but in fact originates in classical nineteenth century physics. Now these methods are being used to unravel the mysteries surrounding the newly discovered materials of the twenty-first century, whose behaviour is fundamentally quantum-mechanical.

The lecture is based on his book, "Sentience: The Invention of Consciousness"

Post-lecture Q&A: https://youtu.be/cBIa1KeXEWk

Craig Childs chronicles the last millennia of the Ice Age, the violent oscillations and retreat of glaciers, the clues and traces that document the first encounters of early humans, and the animals whose presence governed the humans chances for survival.

With the cadence of his narrative moving from scientific observation to poetry, he reveals how much has changed since the time of mammoth hunters, and how little. Across unexplored landscapes yet to be peopled, readers will see the Ice Age, and their own age, in a whole new light.

Craig Childs is a writer, wanderer and contributing editor at High Country News, commentator for NPR's Morning Edition, and teaches writing at University of Alaska and the Mountainview MFA at Southern New Hampshire University. His books include Atlas of a Lost World: Travels in Ice Age America (2019), Apocalyptic Planet (2013) and House of Rain (2008).

"Tracking the First People into Ice Age North America" was given on August 4, 2020 as part of Long Now's Seminar series. The series was started in 2003 to build a compelling body of ideas about long-term thinking from some of the world's leading thinkers.

Why is the deep ocean cold? And why does this matter for global warming?

Doing the maths with pipes and plumbing, not computers, we explore how processes that keep the deep oceans at frigid Arctic temperatures also determine how fast the world is warming in response to rising greenhouse gas concentrations – and also explain why it would be so difficult to say when the warming would stop even if we were to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at today’s levels forever.

#climate #physics #lecture #ocean

What is the Large Hadron Collider used for? How do we know that dark matter exists? Join Pauline Gagnon as she explores these questions and the current ongoing research at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Watch the Q&A here: https://youtu.be/vQ8W6_uM0Pw

Could we be at the dawn of a huge revolution in our conception of the material world that surrounds us?

The creativity, diversity and motivation of thousands of scientists have gone into CERN, and ensured the success of one of the largest scientific projects ever undertaken. It has led to scientists being able to describe the smallest constituents of matter, and the role of the Higgs boson. This talk explores the world of particle physics, spanning the infinitesimally small to the infinitely large.

This talk was recorded at the Ri on 26 September 2022.

Pauline Gagnon first studied at San Francisco State University then completed a PhD in particle physics at University of California in Santa Cruz. Pauline then started research activities at CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics located near Geneva, where Pauline worked as a Senior Research Scientist with Indiana University until retirement in 2016.

Original Description:

Few people now remember that the guitar was popular in England during the age of Queen Elizabeth and Shakespeare, and yet it was played everywhere from the royal court to the common tavern. 

In 1559 Queen Elizabeth herself received a case of three guitars as a New-Year’s day present. 

This opening lecture of the series, with musical illustrations, uses documents, poetry and images to bring the instrument to life, with a particular focus on the autobiography of the beguiling Tudor musician Thomas Whythorne.

"Antarctic explorer Ariel Waldman delivers an impromptu talk at Eyeo Festival 2022 about her work in Antarctica ahead of her next expedition there. Ariel is a National Geographic Explorer, filmmaker, author, and an embedded researcher with the McMurdo Dry Valleys LTER (Long Term Ecological Research) team."

The College of Psychiatrists of Ireland Evolution and Psychiatry Special Interest Group welcomed Dr Randolph M Nesse to present a talk titled "Why hasn't natural selection eliminated mental disorders: Knowing the five reasons improves clinical care as well as research" during their meeting on Friday, 4 February 2022.

The Special Interest Group is open to all College members and Psychiatry trainees.

"Invisible microbes have created some of the largest structures on the planet. Mycorrhizal fungi form extraordinary subterranean networks that associate symbiotically with plant roots. Most land plants, including many human crops, need mycorrhizae for optimal growth, but recent research has shown they also play important roles in forest-wide communication and may even turn some trees into carnivores. More dramatically, microbial communities have created global landmarks ranging from the White Cliffs of Dover to the Great Barrier reef."

Britain has one of the richest of all pagan heritages in Europe, defined as the textual and material evidence for its pre-Christian religions. The island is possessed of monuments, burial sites and a range of other remains not only from several distinct ages of prehistory, but also from three different major historic cultures.

This lecture will look at what we know of prehistoric worship, focusing on Stonehenge and the bog body known as Lindow Man, to examine the difficulties of interpreting evidence for ritual behaviour for which no textual testimony survives.

In this year's Genetics Society JBS Haldane Lecture, Turi King will discuss leading the international research team involved in the DNA identification work of the remains of Richard III and the current project to sequence his entire genome.

Watch the Q&A: https://youtu.be/Be3lDr--l64

Turi King is a Reader in Genetics and Archaeology and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Leicester. She is perhaps best known for leading the genetics analysis in the King Richard III case leading to the identification of his remains in 2014 which led to his reinterment in Leicester Cathedral in 2015.

This talk and Q&A was recorded in the Ri on 26 November 2018.