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Dr John Guy presents a special illustrated lecture to commemorate the 500th Anniversary of the birth of the College’s founder and benefactor Sir Thomas Gresham.
Why did Gresham finance and build it? What did Londoners (and others) do there? And what does the Exchange tell us about Gresham's ambitions both for himself and for London?
The last 500 years of progress in maths will be reviewed, to see where it is going next and ask whether we are truly living in a mathematical Golden Age.
Drawing on evidence from contemporary maps, paintings and writings, and modern environmental science, the lecture will offer a 'virtual' walk around the City with Sir Thomas Gresham.
The changing balance of power and wealth between the aristocracy and the monarchy from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century has fundamentally influenced today’s national cultural landscape of art and architecture.
This lecture questions this view and shows how, from the sixteenth century, aristocratic families deployed their collections and commissioned their buildings in both town and country in order to further their political and dynastic ambitions.
The valuable bequest of Sir Thomas Gresham to the development of scientific interest in seventeenth-century England can be traced through the testimony of Samuel Pepys and John Evelyn - not only great diarists but also ‘particular friends’.
Using contemporary print and theatre, this lecture will discuss how England and Englishness was defined, even as the boundaries between the home and the world became increasingly diffuse.
An integral part of the tumultuous political events of the century was the cultural ambition of the principal players who form the subject of this lecture.
In celebrating 500 years since the birth of Sir Thomas Gresham, Professor Jones will examine how changes since the sixteenth century have affected the evolution of human beings.