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.
An exploration of the concept of the 'good' doctor, and how we can ensure that our doctors are 'good'. This question is crucial at time when morale in the health services appears low and inquiries reveal poor practice by some health care professionals.
M.C. Escher’s work often used ingenious tilings of the plane with interlocking figures. We'll look at the mathematics of this diagram and how Escher used it. We’ll also see how Coxeter produced mathematical research based on aspects of Escher's work.
The mystery of an image of a levitating mathematician that won a first prize in a photo science competition in 2013 will be explained to show that such principles can be used beyond special effects.
Personal information is understood as the property of individuals, but this way of thinking about information raises questions about the ethics of information sharing, particularly in relation to medical research and the management of risk in healthcare.
Mathematics is vital in ensuring that the lights stay on as the planners of the grid need to solve non-linear differential-algebraic equations to work out how much electricity can be generated, distributed and stored. These challenges will increase in the future.
We all rely on materials: natural ones like wood and stone - or manufactured ones such as steel, glass and concrete. The mathematics needed to design and study such materials is rich and challenging.
We all eat and have an interest in food! The many existing, and potential, applications of mathematics in agricultural-science and food technology will be described, explaining many of the fundamental processes that see us fed and watered.
A review of developments in moral psychology over the last two decades, specifically the neuroscience of moral decision-making, and the implications of this research for ethical issues such as moral responsibility. Particularly focus will be given to the capacity to make unwise decisions...
Where should you stand in order to photograph the restored four chimneys of Battersea power station equally spaced along the skyline? - The answer will take us to the heart of the mathematical field of projective geometry.
Characters such as Shrek are actually a collection of triangles and other mathematical objects, demonstrating the role of mathematics in the creation of movies.