Past Lecture

Why we see what we do

The visual system has developed to allow us to navigate in a complex and dangerous world in order to find food and to avoid danger. This survival system works by building a complex three-dimensional model based on two-dimensional ...

Past Lecture

Visual Perception

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

The eye, although a critical component of sight, is not where vision occurs. The ability to interpret the signals generated in the eye by the brain allows for the perception of vision. Sight is a complex sense requiring ...

Past Lecture

Vision and the Artist

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

Visual disorders affect the way we see, and therefore would be expected to influence how we depict the world in drawings and paintings. This fascinating subject is explored using images created by artists with known defects. We ...

Past Lecture

Twenty-first Century Threats: Tuberculosis

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

This lecture is a part of the series Twenty-First Century Threats. Other lectures in this series include the following: HIV/AIDS Malaria Lyme Disease

Past Lecture

Transplantation and the Eye

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

The first successful solid organ transplant was the cornea in Moravia in 1905. However both science and clinical tools then available were unable to allow further advances. The discovery of the natural barriers to transplantation enabled understanding of the biology ...

Past Lecture

The Window on the Soul

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

Vision is the dominant sense through which sighted people have developed our culture. It requires enormous computational power: over half of the human brain is assigned to create vision from the electrical impulses generated by light. Since ...

Past Lecture

The Rule of Law and its Enemies: The Landscape of Law [The 2012 BBC Reith Lecture]

With Professor Niall Ferguson

The historian Niall Ferguson delivers a lecture, recorded at Gresham College in the heart of legal London, addressing the relationship between the nature of law and economic success. He examines the rule of law in comparative terms, asking how ...

Past Lecture

The Origins of the NHS

With Professor Virginia Berridge

This lecture looks at the origins of the NHS; there have been many historical debates about the NHS and its origins. Such questions which are discussed are the debate about conflict or consensus. Did the NHS come about through ...

Past Lecture

The Iconography of Blindness: How artists have portrayed the blind

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

Blind people have always been with us. The attitudes of societies has varied over the years from disgust and horror to sympathy and kindness. How a painter depicts whether a subject cannot see in contrast to those who can ...

Past Lecture

The Human Eye and Vision

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

This introduction to the series covers the structure and function of the human eye. The historical concept of the eye as a simple image-forming device has been transformed to the modern view of the eye as a sophisticated image-processing ...

Past Lecture

The History of Cataract Surgery

With Professor William Ayliffe FRCS PhD

The commonest operation in the world is responsible for restoring sight to millions of blind and visually disabled people every year. From humble beginnings in India over 2,000 years ago it was refined by French surgeons in the Enlightenment. Over ...

Past Lecture

The Future of London's Hospitals

With Dr Patricia Oakley

Part of the Safeguarding London's Health, Monday's at One lecture series. Other lectures in this series are: Medieval Hospitals of London, by William Ayliffe FRCS PhD The Origins ...

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