When it’s not busy hosting a ragtag bunch of iPhone-thumbing, MacBook-tapping science nerds, the Royal Institution has its very own programme of pant mouthwatering events. The autumn schedule has just been released. Here’s my pick of the highlights.
September is largely taken up with events for schools and members, and the rest is booked out already. So we start in October.
8 October
What on Earth Evolved? 100 Species that Changed the World
Christopher Lloyd (no, not that one) takes us on a tour of…well, everything on planet Earth. To coincide with his new book on the subject, Lloyd discusses the frothy course of evolution from Day 1, highlighting some of the more salient creatures in the biosphere’s heritage.
19 October
Café Scientifique: The Selfish Genius
This one’s going to be popular, so book tickets now. Fern Elsdon-Baker critically considers the career of Richard Dawkins – now possibly the most famous (and controversial) living scientist.
29 October
Darwin, FitzRoy and the Voyage of the Beagle: The Untold Story
Catch both a play and a debate about the Beagle and her famous passengers. The panel includes some impressive names: Juliet Aykroyd, Lord Julian Hunt, former Chief Executive of the Met Office, Prof Armand Leroi and Susan Greenfield.
12 November
CP Snow’s ‘Two Cultures’: 50 Years of Debate
The endless debate about the interactions of the ‘two cultures’ of arts and science reaches a focus half a century after its first articulation by CP Snow. The RI’s resident historian Frank James presides, with Helen Haste from University of Bath.
26 November
Why Does E=MC2, and Why Should We Care?
Another sure-fire hit rounds off November. The omnipresent Brian Cox and his Manchester colleague Jeff Forshaw dig deep into that most famous of equations and relate it to the work of the Large Hadron Collider.
Check out the calendar for many other events.
Most importantly, put 26 October in your calendar now. That’s when I’ll be co-hosting the next science pub quiz at the RI. We had a full house last time, but it’d be good to see a few more Nature Networkers competing in October. And I should also mention Jenny Rohn’s lablit book club, the next of which takes place on 7 September.