Gresham College provides outstanding educational talks and videos for the public free of charge. There are over 2,500 videos available on our website. Your support will help us to encourage people's love of learning for many years to come.
This lecture examines the work of Hugo de Vries, a Dutch botanist who was one of the first to claim that science would allow plants and animals to be designed to order.
Sydney’s botanic garden, founded in the early nineteenth century, was expected to ship new plants 'home' to the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, from where they could be transplanted to other colonial gardens, to see if they could become valuable new crops to enrich the British Empire.
This lecture will begin with Bacon’s imagined garden, then consider the long-term promise of the experimental or scientific garden, which would eventually lead to today’s biotechnologies.
The volcanic processes that transport diamonds to the Earth’s surface and enrich copper beneath volcanoes, show how volcanoes can be a major energy and resource.
We will need an aggressive strategy to ensure the safety of agricultural yields and food in the future especially in drought- prone and even temperate zones.
New approaches to volcanic hazard assessment and risk management are emerging as more information is required to respond to volcanic emergencies – illustrated by approaches to some recent eruptions, such as the Soufriere Hills Volcano, Montserrat.
This lecture examines the deep-sea discoveries that have transformed our understanding of our planet, and the history of exploring the deep ocean that covers most of it.