Wren, Hooke and Willis: Divine geometry and natural design

The status of geometry with respect to the natural world was defined in a particular way in the early Royal Society, not least with respect to the role of instruments and inventions (including architecture).
The lecture will look at some key incidents in the representation of nature and at their relationship to human design.

Professor Martin Kemp, Oxford University, has written and broadcast exclusively on imagery in art and science from the Renaissance to the present day.  His research has involved the sciences of optics, anatomy and natural history in various key episodes in the history of naturalism.  He has focused on issues of visualisation, modelling and representation. Recent work embraces the wide range of artefacts from science, technology and the arts that have been devised to create models of nature and to articulate human relationships with the physical world.

This is a lecture to mark the 350th anniversary of the Royal Society.