Gresham College Lectures

Information plays a huge role in the modern world, with vast amounts of data literally at our finger tips. The Internet is leading to an ever-increasing amount of data, leading to the ‘challenge of Big Data’, in which we have to deal with huge amounts of data of direct relevance to people’s lives. Without mathematics, we would be unable to store, transmit, interpret, process or understand any of this. The rise of Big Data is associated not only with major technological challenges, but also with significant ethical and privacy issues, and has major policy implications.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-challenge-of-big-data

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

The English Civil Wars of 1642-8 began as the last of Europe’s wars of religion and ended as the first modern revolution. Parliamentarians had been fighting for the chance to finish England’s Reformation, but the experience of war convinced some of them that thr mere reshaping of the establishment was not enough. To be true to their religious vision, something more searching and profound was needed. This restless spirit manifested itself in various sects and fellowships, united by a loathing of complacency and hypocrisy, which both supported and helped to undermine the republican experiment.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/the-republic-of-king-jesus

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Dickens' use of exaggeration is key to his style. But its use has myriad effects from making a character's disposition unmissable, to adding whimsy and humour.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/charles-dickens-hard-times-and-hyperbole

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

When should intervention take place to safeguard a child? Areas where harm may arise include children at risk of being radicalised; parents promoting terrorism; or planning or being groomed to travel to Syria (with or without their parents). But removal is not a 'risk free' option since it may appear to be victimisation; reinforce a perception of 'them and us'; or radicalise those who were previously uninvolved. Emerging law and practice in this area will be examined.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/is-one-individuals-radicalism-anothers-right-to-free-speech

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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In the commerce second lecture, trends in the labour market will be considered, examining patterns of unemployment, employment, hours worked and real wages. Do high participation rates in the labour market reflect and/or represent economic progress or an economy mired in low-skill low-wages jobs?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/employment-and-unemployment

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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From Leonardo da Vinci to the Brothers Grimm our fascination with hair has endured in art and science. We love it for its "body" or "volume", the fluffiness and elasticity that comes from its random waves and curls. But apart from a purely tactile response, can we take a more quantitative approach to hair, to explain these macroscopic properties in terms of the behaviour of individual hairs? We know that the important physics governing hair involves the interplay of its elasticity, weight, and curliness, but it is only recently that these have been synthesized into a mathematical theory. This talk will cover the mathematics involved, focusing on the important historical developments of elasticity theory due to Euler and Bernoulli and the determination of energy-minimizing shapes through the calculus of variations.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/leonardo-rapunzel-and-the-mathematics-of-hair

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Doctors' careers can be sometimes built on publication rates and citation indices. Medical journals preferentially publish positive results, which also benefits industry. It is not surprising that scientific fraud occurs. When discovered, reputations are broken and livelihoods lost. The collateral damage to innocent patients and other researchers can be catastrophic. This lecture reviews some classic and some new examples of fraud and discusses what can be done to prevent it.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/seeing-through-the-lies-innovation-and-the-need-for-transparency

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

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For some, twentieth-century buildings are not heritage, but for an increasing number, they are the most threatened buildings in Britain. Post war modernism is now at the centre of the hardest fought and most controversial conservation debates. Which buildings, if any, should be listed and what should the criteria be? How far can experimental buildings of the 1960s and '70s be altered for new uses? Should there be new rules for a new era of conservation?

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/saving-the-twentieth-century

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

At some time in the fourth century some bishops assembled for a synod in a city whose site is now in Turkey. Today, the place where they met retains little of the grandeur that made it an appropriate choice for such a gathering; there are only broken walls in a coarsened landscape, grazed by sheep, to recall the colonnades and forum of the ancient city with its basilicas. In their deliberations, the bishops identified for the first time in Christian history, an actual ministry of song. They decreed that Only regularly appointed singers capable of reading from parchment, should be allowed to ascend the pulpit from now on and sing in churches. This lecture will build on this foundational moment in Christian musical history.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/towards-a-ministry-of-singing

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 1,900 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk

Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Thomas More's Utopia was first published 500 years ago. Its central idea, of a perfect but impossible place, has since become part of our mental furniture. But what does this very amusing (though also rather stern) book mean? It has sometimes been seen as a satire on the inevitable conformity of political equality but may rather offer a portrait of a magnificently just society. Utopia's links both with London and with the civic culture of Renaissance Europe more generally will be explained. Focussing on its significance at the time when it was written, with reflections on its remarkably varied legacy. This is part of the Being Human festival and is complemented by an exhibition at the University of London's Senate House which runs until December 2016, Utopia and Dystopia.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and-events/thomas-mores-magnificent-utopia

Gresham College has been giving free public lectures since 1597. This tradition continues today with all of our five or so public lectures a week being made available for free download from our website. There are currently over 2,000 lectures free to access or download from the website.

Website: http://www.gresham.ac.uk
Twitter: http://twitter.com/GreshamCollege
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/greshamcollege
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/greshamcollege

Support the show