The Surprising Uses of Conic Sections

https://www.gresham.ac.uk/sites/default/files/transcript/2022-04-25-1300_HART-T.pdf https://youtu.be/qFSN6XePEyw 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 […]

The geological record of climate change

Professor Christopher Jackson The Earth is warming, and dangerously so. But is this unusual? Have there been times in the past when the Earth has been very hot or perhaps, very cold? And if so, what caused this, and what did these changes in climate mean for life on Earth? In this talk Professor Christopher […]

Planetary Universe

Professor Katherine Blundell OBE 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? https://youtu.be/1GaeKxYbWYA This […]

The Beauty of Geometrical Curves

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 […]

Magnetic Universe

Professor Katherine Blundell OBE https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/blundell https://www.sjc.ox.ac.uk/discover/people/professor-katherine-blundell/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Blundell https://uk.linkedin.com/in/katherine-blundell https://twitter.com/prof_katherine?lang=en Professor Blundell was appointed Gresham Professor of Astronomy in 2019. She is a Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University and a Research Fellow at St John’s College. Before this she was one of the Royal Society’s University Research Fellows, a Research Fellow of the 1851 Royal […]

The Evolution of Cancer Therapy

Professor Eleanor Stride Eleanor Stride, OBE, FREng is the Statutory Professor of Biomaterials in the Departments of Engineering Science and the Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences. She specialises in the fabrication of nano and microscale devices for targeted drug delivery. She obtained her BEng and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from UCL where […]

The Maths of Proportion in Art, Design and Nature

Professor Sarah Hart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_B._Hart Sarah B. Hart is a British mathematician specialising in group theory. She is a professor of mathematics at Birkbeck, University of London and the Head of Mathematics and Statistics at Birkbeck. In 2020, she was appointed to what may be the oldest chair in mathematics in Britain, the Gresham Professor of […]

The Broken Cosmic Distance Ladder

Professor Roberto Trotta https://www.imperial.ac.uk/people/r.trotta http://robertotrotta.com/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertotrotta/?originalSubdomain=uk https://twitter.com/r_trotta?lang=en Roberto Trotta is Visiting Gresham Professor of Cosmology and Professor of Astrostatistics at Imperial College London, currently on leave of absence to the International School of Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy, where he is part of the senior leadership team establishing a new Data Science Institute. His research […]

Structures in the Universe

Professor Katherine Blundell OBE https://www.gresham.ac.uk/professors-and-speakers/katherine-blundell/ https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/blundell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katherine_Blundell Katherine Mary Blundell OBE is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a supernumerary research fellow at St John’s College, Oxford https://www.linkedin.com/in/katherine-blundell/?originalSubdomain=uk https://twitter.com/prof_katherine?lang=en How did the cosmos transition into space characterised by galaxies in a plethora of different shapes of great beauty? This lecture considered […]

Light (weight)

Dr Carolyn Atkins https://www.roe.ac.uk/roe/staff/index.html Why do we need telescopes in space? What are the challenges in collecting light from distant objects in space like planets, stars and galaxies? This talk answered these questions and explained how the STFC UK Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh is using 3D printing to solve some of the challenges of […]