PROGRAMME FOR THE YEAR 1999-2000
Interested individuals are welcome to attend; full membership is encouraged for those who wish to receive advance notice of events and invitation to our visits and social functions. For further details contact:-
Membership Secretary, SAR
University of Cambridge
Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office
20 Trumpington Street
Cambridge, CB2 1QA
Telephone: Cambridge (01223) 334756
Unless otherwise noted below, all events take place at 8.30pm
at Churchill College, Cambridge. Members are welcome for coffee
from 8.15pm. AR Programme 1999-2000
SATURDAY 16 October 1999
AUTUMN’S PALETTE: A VISIT TO ANGLESEY ABBEY
GARDENS
Tour with the Head Gardener, 11:00-1:00. Fee of
£5, meet in the car-park at Anglesey Abbey, Lode, near
Cambridge. A sociable start to the year, enjoying the magnificent
autumn colours of the plantings in the finest landscape gardens
created in the 20th century, in the knowledgeable company of
those responsible for their maintenance. Guests should make their
own arrangements for lunch, and are welcome to visit the Abbey
and its world-famous art collection in the afternoon. The fee
applies to all, including National Trust members.
Monday 18 October 1999
WHAT WE DON’T YET KNOW
Sir John Maddox, Editor Emeritus of
‘Nature’. (Please note the changed topic). What
scientific challenges remain? Where are the limits to our
understanding of the universe? What do we not yet know - and what
may we never know?
Monday 25 October 1999
HUMAN OBESITY: SIMPLY GLUTTONY AND SLOTH?
Professor Stephen O’Rahilly, Depts. of
Medicine & Biochemistry, Addenbrooke’s Hospital,
Cambridge. (Meeting with Cambridge Philosophical Society,
8:30-10:00p.m., Cockcroft Lecture Theatre, Pembroke Street). It
has been fashionable to regard ‘fatties’ as the
consequences of their own indulgence - ‘thin people and a
lot of chocolate’ - but is this really the case? What are
obesity’s real roots, and what is being done to treat it as
a correctable medical condition?
Monday 1 November 1999
THE NINO AND ITS SIGNIFICANCE
Sir Crispin Tickell GCMG KCVO, Chancellor,
University of Kent at Canterbury, Everyone has heard of The Nino
- the climate & weather changes which periodically occur
around the end of December in the southern hemisphere - since the
strong Nino events of 1997-8, which demonstrated how relatively
minor changes in the earth’s climatic system can have
world-wide impacts. We now face the prospect of accelerated
climate change, and its consequences for the earth and its
intricate web of ecosystems. How frequent is the Nino? How
serious is it - and is mankind contributing to it?
Monday 15 November 1999
APHRODISIACS, PSYCHEDELICS & THE ELUSIVE MAGIC
BULLET
Prof. John Mann, Department of Chemistry, Reading
University, The use of natural extracts that hot-wire the brain
and sexually arouse the body has ever fascinated mankind, and the
resulting search has resulted in over half our medicines, not
least the `magic bullets’, natural extracts used in cancer
chemotherapy. A review of aphrodisiacs and `mind-expanding’
drugs will be followed by a discussion of the discovery &
development of modern medicines of natural origin, including
penicillin & taxol.
Monday 29 November 1999
FAKES!
Dr Paul Craddock
British Museum, London (Combined with SAR AGM), Fakery is never
pure and rarely simple. How do museums tell if the objects they
own or are offered are genuine - or the clever products of
cupidity & greed? Following the spectacular ‘Fake?’
exhibition in 1990 at the British Museum, this lecture will focus
on the science of faking, to show how fakers give themselves away
by using anachronistic materials and techniques. But it will also
show how some fakes pass the scientific tests...!
Monday 6 December 1999
A MILLENNIUM OF THE APPLICATION OF RESEARCH
Mr Brian Ford Biologist and Author, Council Member
of SAR, The world a thousand years ago was an understandable
place, with God in heaven and Man on earth - even if Man’s
existence was more than a bit grotty most of the time. Science
and the application of research and invention has since utterly
changed the world several times over - and shows no sign of
stopping. At the end of the millennium, we take a look back over
just how far, just how fast we have come.
Monday 17 January 2000
THE NEW MILLENNIUM
Professor Richard John Artley, Scientific Generics,
Cambridge, A new millennium - but will it be business as usual?
We take a further look at the process of change, its recent
acceleration, and ask - just what will the future hold? How much
of what we take for granted today will we be able to take for
granted tomorrow?
Monday 31 January 2000
DEATH OF VENICE?
Dr Deborah Howard, Department of Architecture,
University of Cambridge, Venice’s amphibious site gives it
unique assets and unique problems. Chosen to be defensible, yet
invaded by millions of tourists each year; with attractive watery
outlook provided you don’t mind the pollution: unstable both
physically and politically, it is seemingly trapped in helpless
decline. There is a future for the city, but it cannot be
achieved without strong leadership and sensitive, appropriate
solutions.
Monday 14 February 2000
MARTIAN MICROBES? THE METEORITE EVIDENCE
Dr Monica Grady, Head of the Division of Petrology
& Meteoritics, Department of Mineralogy, Natural History
Museum, London, Have we indeed discovered extraterrestrial life?
What is the possibility of advanced life forms developing on
other planets - even ones in our own Solar System?
Monday 28 February 2000
THE MILLENNIUM SEED BANK PROJECT
Mr Roger Smith, Head of the Seed Conservation
Department, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Wakehurst Place, Sussex.
(The Cambridge Philosophical Society will join us for this
meeting). The spread of mankind is now so pervasive that no part
of the planet can be considered as isolated from our activity; we
are upsetting delicately balanced micro-ecosystems everywhere we
turn. It has been calculated that as many as a quarter of the
world’s plant species are in danger of extinction in the
next century - and Kew has created its own ‘Noah’s
Ark’ for plants to ensure that some at least, may survive.
Monday 13 March 2000
EVERY DROP TO DRINK: THE WATER INDUSTRY
Professor Kenneth J Ives CBE DSc FEng, Emeritus
Professor of Civil Engineering, University College, London, We
take clean water for granted - yet a bare century ago, even in
the most developed countries, half the population died from
water-borne diseases, and still today clean water is not
available to a significant part of the world’s population.
We will hear about
developments in this most vital, but most overlooked, industry.
Monday 20 March 2000
UP, UP AND AWAY: A VISIT TO MARSHALL AEROSPACE LTD.
Hosted by Mr Terry Holloway, FRAeS, Group Support
Executive (Details to be announced). A visit to the Marshall
Group of companies (turnover £450m, employing 3000), which from
its foundation in 1909 has been at the forefront of vehicles and
aviation design, and is still under the control of the third
generation of its founding family.
Monday 8 May 2000
GOD, TIME AND COSMOLOGY
Professor F Russell Stannard PhD FInstP CPhys,
Former Professor and Head of Physics, The Open University, Recent
popularisations of cosmology have called into question whether
there is any need of God - how can a Creator God be a
pre-existent cause of the Big Bang, if time itself started then?
Does research into the nature of the universe necessarily damage
our religious belief and our own sense of worth? And is life
itself ‘the more-or-less farcical outcome of a chain of
accidents’ or are life and the cosmos actually in tune?
Monday 22 May 2000
THE IMMUNITY GENE
Dr Robert Jackson, Director of Research,
Chiroscience Ltd, Cambridge, As we understand more the genetic
basis of mankind, and our inborn faculties for disease
resistance, the search for the immunity gene has heated up. How
close are we to the final conquest of illness?
Monday 5 June 2000
INVENTING A NEW CHOCOLATE TECHNOLOGY
Dr Malcolm Mackley, Department of Chemical
Engineering, University of Cambridge, One of the greatest
achievements of civilisation is its ability to create things that
are merely delightful, with no other reason - and chocolate
certainly comes into this category! Yet our luxuries, perhaps
even more than our necessities, are backed by a wealth of
expertise, invention, and achievement.
Monday 12 June 2000
IT’S GOOD TO TALK? THE TELECOMS INDUSTRY
(Speaker to be announced). The telecommunications
revolution has now made it possible to speak to almost anyone,
almost anywhere, almost anywhen. What is next? Has the
revolution, truly, only just begun?
Monday 19 June 2000
BIOTECHNOLOGY AT BABRAHAM: SOIREE, THE BABRAHAM
INSTITUTE, BABRAHAM HALL, CAMBRIDGE
hosted by Dr Caroline Edmunds, Head of Corporate
Affairs (Details to be announced). Biotechnology has been the
great hope of recent developments - but how far will it actually
go?
All lectures are 8:30 - 10:00 p.m. at the Wolfson Theatre,
Churchill College, Cambridge, unless otherwise stated. Non
members are very welcome at all lecture meetings. Other events
are for members only. Full details are circulated to members of
the Society before every event. For details of meetings or
membership, please see our Web site:
http://www.sciences.demon.co.uk/sar01.htm
Coffee and biscuits are provided during the 30 minute period
preceding each lecture.
Non members are very welcome at all lecture meetings. Other events are for members only.
Full details are circulated to members of the Society before every event.
Prof. Sir Sam Edwards FRS (Cavendish Laboratory) President; Mr. K. Spence-Jones (SJ Consulting Limited) Vice President; Dr. N. Bruce (Institute of Biotechnology); Prof. D.G. Crighton FRS (DAMTP); Dr. J.H. Cummings (Dunn Clinical Nutrition Lab); Brian J. Ford (Chartered Biologist); Prof. L.D. Hall (Laboratory for Medicinal Chemistry); Dr. R.C. Jennings (Wolfson Industrial Liaison Office); Mr. I. Kent (Dalgety Spillers); Mr. R.A. King CBE (Graseby plc); Dr. W.C. Nixon FEng (Peterhouse, Cambridge); Dr. P.W. Russell-Eggitt OBE (Consultant); Mr. C. Smart (Cambridge Research & Innovation); Mr. P.R. Bligh (Deloitte & Touche) Corporate Secretary; Prof. Richard Artley (Scientific Generics) Organising Secretary.