Monday

The Royal Institution and the US Embassy in London join forces for a special lecture to introduce the RI’s American Collection. Letters, manuscripts and artifacts form the backdrop to the lecture by Thomas Karl on what we know about the Earth’s climate and how we know it. 7-9pm; booking essential.

Tuesday

Not an event so much as a special exhibition from Imperial College today: Beautiful Science is an exhibition put together by a mixed group of biomedical scientists and artists to look at the different ways to represent science in art. Hosted at the Brick Lane gallery, today is the first day open to the public. 1-6pm; free.

Wednesday

Shark! There has been a disappointing lack of shark themed events in London lately, but ZSL puts a stop to that with Our Shark Obsession, a special public lecture by Washington Post environmental correspondent Juliet Eilperin on the complex relationsip between humans and the oceans’ top predator. 6:30 – 8:30; free but book.

Thursday

To be an artist during the Renaissance was, for many, to be an anatomist. Is this still true today? And do Leonardo da Vinci’s anatomical drawings have any relevance to contemporary medical practice? These questions and more will be addressed in The Art of Anatomy, the latest event in the Wellcome Collection’s brain series at 7pm; tickets free but limited to two per person and booking is essential.

Friday

Another chance to have a go at String Theory at the Royal Institution tonight, but only if you are a member; the Friday evening discourse is called The Pointless Universe and features Michael Green looking at ways throughout history science has addressed questions from the origin of the universe to sub atomic particles. 8pm start; free for members, £15 for guests. Smart dress.

You can follow nature.com blog’s London Google calendar of events at https://blogs.nature.com/london/2011/05/17/scientific-events-calendar. Updated daily.

————————————————————————–

As well as our regularly maintained calendar, you can find lots of other suggestions of science-y events in London. We have compiled a list of some other places to look: we will continue adding to this list, and please do, as always, send us additions for it:

Collections and calendars

Londonist recommendations: All things scientific, technical and geeky

Ian Visits: A calendar of all types of events in London, including science and engineering, with added editorial

Museums, societies etc:

Wellcome Collection: Regular events and exhibitions of a medical flavour at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road

Royal Institution: Miscellaneous science and policy events

Royal Society: Science, policy and conferences

ZSL: Zoological Society of London; occasional events on conservation and zoology

Hunterian Museum: Part of the Royal College of Surgeons, with a treasure trove of specimens and surgical paraphenalia

University calendars (usually featuring dozens of events per week)

UCL

Imperial

LSE

Monday

This month’s Fiction Lab is a Meet the Author special with Jennifer Cryer attending to join the discussion about her book Breathing on Glass. Hosted as always by Jenny Rohn; 7pm start, free and new and old members welcome.

Tuesday

Would You Donate Your Body Parts for Art and Science? That’s the important question to be tackled at the Dana Centre, inspired by the new exhibit in the science museum which is a giant block of resin encrusted with human milk teeth. Milk teeth perhaps not so seriously missed… but how far would you go? 7 – 9pm; free but booking essential. Continue reading →

This blog does not often report on individual events before they happen, but the Natural History Museum has one so special next week that it cannot pass without a mention… or a picture of this: Continue reading →

Monday

Science and music is the apparent theme of the moment and it continues at the Dana Centre this week with Guitar Zero: The Science of Learning to be Musical. Ian Tucker, Commissioning Editor of the Observer, Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology and Director of the New York University Center for Language and Music and David Mead, acoustic guitarist, writer and teacher, will be your hosts as they discuss how anyone can learn to be musical. 7pm; free but booking essential. Continue reading →

Science Online New York (SoNYC) encourages audience participation in the discussion of how science is carried out and communicated online. To tie in with June’s event which looks at how scientists reach out of the ivory tower, communicating science to the public, we’re hosting a series of guest posts on Nature blogs. We will hear from a range of contributors: scientists, writers, enthusiasts, communicators, events organizers, policy makers and teachers, each sharing details about how they engage and reach out to the public.

James Franklin is Communications Manager at Gresham College, an independent educational institution in Central London which provides over 100 free lectures a year. He has a background in website management and online sub-editing. He is a Master of Philosophy born and raised in the Isle of Man. Continue reading →

A perhaps predictably slow week for events this week, with apparently half of London scientists watching the Jubilee or amusing the kids for half term, and the other half decamped to the Hay festival. So if you happen to be near Hay-on-Wye, you will have a plethora of choices, including a range of really interesting looking events from the Royal Society, but for those still left in London, sparser than usual pickings with some organisations including ZSL even cancelling scheduled events.

Hence, if you can help fill this week’s calendar, suggestions in the comments or by email are, as always, very welcome!

Wednesday

One for the parents amongst you; UCL’s Grant Museum offers an afternoon of activities to keep half term interesting with Extreme Animals. Specimens from the collection with help children meet some of the biggest, smallest, heaviest, lightest, strongest, cutest, ugliest, weirdest and wildest animals in the Grant Museum. 1-5pm; free and no need to book.

Alternatively the Royal Institution has a members only event for older children which sounds like it might be worth becoming a member for on its own. “Codes and information (or wicked wizards and devious dwarves)” will use a series of puzzles to investigate how communication systems detect and remove errors. 10:30 or 2:30pm; 8 years +; tickets range up to £10; book soon because there are only a handful of tickets left.

The Weekend

Saturday is Family Fun Day at the Royal Institution; 11am – 4pm will see a whole range of activities for children of varying ages around this month’s theme of Fabrics and Knitting. Tickets £10 adults, £5 children.

For a possibly rainer activity, the Wellcome Collection has a guided walk around Bloomsbury with Ros Stanwell-Smith of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, exploring stories of brains on Wellcome Collection’s doorstep. Saturday and Sunday at 11 – 12:30; tickets free but booking essential and limited to two per person.

Last but not least, this weekend is the first of the new event Dino Snores, an adult-only sleepover at the Natural History Museum. For the not insignificant price tag of £175, you get an evening in the museum with a three course dinner, all sorts of events and a cooked breakfast the next morning. Places limited. EDIT: This event has been postponed until Friday 17th August – ticket holders can get a refund or a place at the new date.

You can follow nature.com blog’s London Google calendar of events at https://blogs.nature.com/london/2011/05/17/scientific-events-calendar. Updated daily.

————————————————————————–

As well as our regularly maintained calendar, you can find lots of other suggestions of science-y events in London. We have compiled a list of some other places to look: we will continue adding to this list, and please do, as always, send us additions for it:

Collections and calendars

Londonist recommendations: All things scientific, technical and geeky

Ian Visits: A calendar of all types of events in London, including science and engineering, with added editorial

Museums, societies etc:

Wellcome Collection: Regular events and exhibitions of a medical flavour at the Wellcome Collection on Euston Road

Royal Institution: Miscellaneous science and policy events

Royal Society: Science, policy and conferences

ZSL: Zoological Society of London; occasional events on conservation and zoology

Hunterian Museum: Part of the Royal College of Surgeons, with a treasure trove of specimens and surgical paraphenalia

University calendars (usually featuring dozens of events per week)

UCL

Imperial

LSE

  Continue reading →

Monday

Do we need friends? That is the question that Professor Neil McCrae will be asking at the Royal Institution’s Cafe Scientifique as he leads a discussion inspired by his research into the social brain and the benefits to animals of social behaviour. 6:30 – 8pm; entrance is free and all are welcome to attend and encouraged to participate in discussion.

Tuesday

A really big name in world science comes to London: Professor Rolf-Dieter Heuer, Director General of CERN. Speaking at the Royal Society, Professor Heuer will take a look at the big picture of the Large Hadron Collider, showing some of the most promising results so far. The event is free and open to all; tickets are first come, first served with doors opening 5:30 for 6pm. If you can’t make it, the event will be live streamed on the Royal Society website  and the recording available later in the week. Continue reading →

A common caricature of science is that it likes to think of itself as above politics; a disinterested, purely empirical interaction with the natural world. But what about the public communication of science? The May TalkFest event was held tonight at the Biochemical Society with guests Alice Bell, Simon Lewis, Steve Cross, Michael Brooks and Felicity Mellor asking whether science communication can ever be apolitical and whether it should even try. Continue reading →

Monday

Gresham College opens the week with a medical science talk from Professor Pat Nuttall which will consider the likelihood of being bitten by a tick carrying the Lyme Disease spirochaete, Borrelia burgdorferi.  Lyme Disease is spreading across the Northern Hemisphere: what are our risks and what can we do to control it? 6pm near Holborn; free and no need to book.

Tuesday

A double bill of evening lectures at Imperial. Fist up, The cancer genome: An autobiography encoded DNA given by Peter Campbell of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute. Next, Professor Stephen Gentleman will talk about the link between traumatic brain injury and neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s in Brains, Trains and Automobiles. Unfortunately you can’t take in both; the former is 5 – 6pm, the latter 5:30 – 6:30pm, both free and no need to book. Continue reading →

A rare chance to see some of London’s most interesting haunts in another light this weekend with the annual Museums at Night. A national event co-ordinated by Culture24, this weekend, 18-20th May, will see over 200 museums nationwide open after hours for special events and activities. What’s particularly interesting about this event is that it isn’t only the large museums doing it. The Natural History Museum and the Science Museum of course already have their own late night events, but this is an opportunity to see some of the lesser known, but no less fascinating, museums.

For the full list of museums opening, see the Museums at Night listings; for those of you in London, we have put together a short selection of our personal London highlights:

1. The Royal Observatory, Greenwich. One of our favourite museums in London, the Observatory will be open until 8pm on Saturday 19th for a whole range of family and adult activities including a talk entitled, “Space is big…”, a planet-finder making workshop for kids and the opportunity to talk to astronomers about their work. All events are free except the planetarium shows.

2. The Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons. Nature London has posted about the Hunterian Museum before because it really is one of London’s hidden gems. This Friday evening, 6-9pm, there will be a host of talks, activities and archival displays that will look at the life of Thomas Wakley, surgeon, Lancet founder and medical crusader. Free; not suitable for children. Continue reading →