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.
Space science is one of HM Government’s ‘eight great technologies’. In this lecture I will explain the mathematics behind satellites, showing how they are controlled, how they are sent to distant planets and how they transmit and receive data over vast distances.
Driverless cars will affect us all profoundly. They will save many lives, destroy many livelihoods and change our behaviour in unexpected ways. What are the barriers to achieving the benefits of this new technology and how can they be overcome?
Many of us have been in a medical scanner and benefited from its use in medical diagnostics. But how many of us have considered how it works? The maths behind modern medical imaging (showing how CAT, MRI and Ultrasound scanners work) will be explained.
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.
Alan Turing famously proposed a test of artificial intelligence. What has been achieved? Stephen Hawking has said that real artificial intelligence will mean the end of mankind. Is that a real threat? Are there limits to what a silicon brain might do?
Using DNA and gene-based therapy to treat human diseases may sound like science-fiction, but there are already several gene therapies in use today. This lecture will describe what gene therapy is all about, the recent advancements in the field and what the future holds for gene therapies.
Few people are lucky enough to save lives or change them for the better. Few also experience the horror of losing lives or worsening them. In this lecture I want to share some of the astonishing experiences of a paediatric heart surgeon.
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.