Alice's Adventures in Algebra...

Read the New Scientist article about Melanie Bayley's research here.

CFP - Science and the Public 2010

Imperial College, London, 3rd and 4th of July 2010.

Now in its fifth year, the Science and the Public conference aims to bring together the various strands of academia which consider science’s relationships with groups generally called ‘the public’. Delegates come from a wide range of disciplines: science and technology studies, history of science, geography, psychology, cultural studies, media studies, sociology, development studies, English literature, science policy studies and more.

The range of topics covered may include (but are not limited to):
* PUS, PEST, PR.
* Surveying public knowledge and attitudes.
* Science and the arts (including science fiction).
* Science, publics and personal identity.
* The role of industry and/ or the third sector in public engagement and scientific research.
* The challenges of ‘upstream’ engagement.
* Popular science and professionalization.
* Specific public-science issues: e.g. climate change, MMR, energy policy, GMOs.
* Studies of specific media: e.g. film, books, the internet, museums, radio.
* Science, religion and the ‘New Atheism’.
* Politically engaged scientists.
* Churnalism vs. investigative science journalism.
* Edu-tainment.
* Scientific advisers, spin and secrecy.
* Patients and publics in health services.
* Science and the sceptics.
* Amateur science.

Potential contributors should email a 300 word abstract to scienceandpublic@googlemail.com by 1st March 2010. Please include full contact details (name, affiliation, email) of all authors.

Panel proposals should include a panel abstract and individual abstracts for each of the papers on the panel as well as contact information (name, affiliation, email) of the presider (moderator) and all panel members.

All submissions should be emailed to scienceandpublic@googlemail.com by 1st March 2010. All other enquires also to this address.

LitSciMed Social Space

Join the new Social Space of the Theories and Methods: Literature, Science, Medicine group here. For further details see here.

Boojums All the Way Through

I thought I'd add to the blog a reference to the book I mentioned at the group's last discussion -- David Mermin's delightful and fascinating collection of essays, "Boojums All the Way Through: Communicating Science in a Prosaic Age". Here Mermin explains his coinage of the Carollian term "boojum" for a particular configuration of a spherical drop of superfluid Helium-3 remaining after a precursor has "softly and suddenly vanished away", his heroic campaign to get "boojum" into Physical Review Letters, and another skirmish with the editors of Physical Review over the acceptability of referring to a paper as "charming". The volume also contains a relativistic tragicomedy that has been termed "the only [known] Elizabethan drama that is explicitly Lorentz invariant", some very nice pedagogical introductions to quantum entanglement and nonlocality, and much else for anyone involved or interested in science or scientific exposition to enjoy.

Adrian Kent

Alternatives Théatrâles

A while ago, we spent a very successful and enjoyable couple of terms discussing science and drama. One of the participants, Liliane Campos, has now co-edited a special issue of the journal "Alternatives Théatrâles", entitled "Côté Sciences" and dedicated to this topic. The issue includes articles by three of us -- Liliane's own contribution, one by Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, and my decidedly experimental attempt to say something about Frayn's "Copenhagen" from the perspective of a quantum physicist. Other contributors include John Barrow, Bruno Latour and Lewis Wolpert. More details and a full list of contributors here. The issue was launched late last month at Le Laboratoire.


I'm looking forward to reading the other contributions -- and maybe to the group returning to science and drama some time soon.

Adrian Kent

CFP - Science Communication Conference

24-25 May 2010, London


The British Science Association is working in partnership with the Wellcome Trust to organise the 2010 Science Communication Conference. The event will take place from 24-25 May in central London and we are now looking for people and organisations to propose sessions.

The conference addresses the key issues facing science communicators in the UK and each year brings together people who are involved in public engagement - a diverse group of people from a broad range of backgrounds. It is a fantastic opportunity to network, share ideas and good practice.
The theme for the conference will be ‘audiences for engagement’ and can involve experts from other disciplines who have engaged successfully with certain audiences, not necessarily about science.
Conference sessions are generally 60-75 minutes long and run in parallel with between two and five other sessions. This allows for smaller group discussion and better sharing of learning. We wish to encourage a range of formats at the conference. It is more likely that your proposal will be successful if you use a format other than a traditional panel of a certain number of speakers and a chair. We are particularly interested in showcasing activities within the sessions.

If you are interested in submitting a session idea please visit:
www.britishscienceassociation/ScienceCommunicationConference for more information. Here you can view programmes and reports from previous conferences.

Please note that the deadline for submissions is Monday 21 December 2009. If you would like to discuss your idea prior to submission then please contact Alice Taylor-Gee on 020 7019 4940 or email alice.taylor-gee@britishscienceassociation.org.

If you would like to receive updates about the conference then please sign up to our e-lert list by emailing events@britishscienceassociation.org with 'SCC e-lert' in the subject line.

PhD programme - "Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period"

King’s College London / University of Stuttgart

Application deadline: 30/11/2009

The PhD-Net “Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period” is a bi-national PhD programme run collaboratively by King’s College London and the University of Stuttgart, which aims to forge interdisciplinary connections between various subjects in the Humanities (German Studies, English Studies, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and the Histories of Medicine, Science and Technology). Partner institutions in Germany include the German Literature Archive in Marbach and the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

An international research group will support and connect projects which address both inter- and trans-national tendencies within the Humanities. Projects will develop both theoretical models for the as yet under-researched area of internationalisation within the Humanities, as well as critically assess historical case studies from the early modern period onwards, which address the role of exchange movements and networks and the transfer of topics, practices and methods in literature and science.

Of particular interest is the relevance of literature(s) for the internationalisation of the sciences, alongside critical reflections on the significance of the presentation and the mediality of knowledge (language, text, image) for its circulation, communication and implementation.

Applicants from all disciplines are welcome to apply to the programme – both those who are already registered as PhD candidates at King’s or Stuttgart, and those who are planning to undertake a PhD at either
institution. Up to 15 PhD students will be supported in England and in Germany each year. Support covers: travel costs, book grants, and assistance in obtaining further PhD funding / reduced fees. Successful candidates not otherwise funded by a full scholarship and who decide to undertake the dual degree will qualify for a grant of 2,000 pounds a year.

The PhD programme lasts three years, and students registered at King’s will spend their second year at the partner university in Stuttgart. The programme is bilingual, and as such some knowledge of German is desirable for English speaking applicants.

All applications received by the 30/11/2009 will be considered.
Applications should include:

- a CV
- a brief project outline (max. 2,000 words) including the topic, thesis, state of research, methods and a plan of work
- a cover letter (max. 600 words) explaining your interest in the programme and the thematic connections between your research project and your previous academic experience

Please address all applications and enquiries to:

Ben Schofield
Department of German
King’s College London
Strand
London UK-WC2R 2LS
benedict.schofield@kcl.ac.uk

Book - New Edition of 'Flatland'

A new edition of Edwin Abbott's Flatland (1884) has just been published by Broadview Press as part of their literary editions series. The introduction to this edition provides context for the book's references to Victorian culture and religion, mathematical history (particularly the 1880s "textbook wars"), and the history of philosophy. The Appendix material includes autobiographical selections from Abbott's The Kernel and the Husk and statements on his religious views from The Spirit on the Water, contemporary reviews of Flatland, Victorian mathematical essays on non-Euclidean geometry, and selections from C. H. Hinton's writings.

Further details can be found here.

CFP - Insects and Texts: Spinning Webs of Wonder

Explora International Conference
4-5 May 2010
Toulouse Natural History Museum/CAS (UTM)

Vladimir Nabokov, both writer and entomologist, once explained that he could not “separate the aesthetic pleasure of seeing a butterfly and the scientific pleasure of knowing what it is” [Interview with Robert H. Boyle, Sports Illustrated, 1959]. This conference proposes to examine man’s fascination with the world of insects as reflected not only in the rich history of entomological research, from amateur or professional collecting to scientific expeditions, but also in more artistic forms of expression - myth, literature, painting, photography, cinema and music. Whether insects stimulate man’s curiosity or inspire fear, whether parallels or contrasts are seen between human society and the astonishing skills of insects, this conference aims to explore the relation between man and insects. Through the study of either scientific and technological developments in entomology, or artistic concerns with insects, we invite specialists of entomology and/or the arts to reconsider the relationship of man to nature through the magnifying glass of an entomologist. Papers that offer an interdisciplinary approach on science and art are especially welcome.

We invite 20-minute papers that engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- the history of entomology and insect classification
- the history of insect collecting
- the popularization of entomology
- entomology and scientific expeditions
- entomology and technological development
- insects and biodiversity
- representations of insects, ecosystems and ecology
- the resurgence of insect worlds in human society
- entomology and naturalist painters
- entomology and photography
- insects in literature
- insects in illustrated books
- insects in cinema/films
- insects and the fantastic
- insects and music
- entomological metamorphoses in science and art

Please send 300-word proposals (attached as a .doc-file) together with a short biographical note to exploraentomology@gmail.com. Deadline for submissions: 15 February 2010.

Talk - Communicating Science: Easy But Impossible

7pm, Thursday 26th November

Leverhulme Centre for Human Evolutionary Studies, Fitzwilliam Street, Cambridge.

Despite a growing interest among scientists in engaging with the public and
the media, we still lacks a genuine science communication culture. While
communication of every kind is on everyone's lips, we are still far from the
genuinely 'intelligent' communication promised by the advent of the
'knowledge society'. Technologies may be partly responsible for this
paradox. Having pervasive 'means' of accessing and exchanging information
creates the feeling that we are communicating better. While this is no doubt
true in so far as society is spontaneously generating new and creative
initiatives, much remains to be done when it comes to the various levels in
established institutions and organizations. We will discuss other challenges
science communication is facing today such as:

- Do we need science journalists?
- New technologies: friends or foes?
- Turning science into "mediascience"
- Promoting the science-society dialogue

About the speaker:

Michel Claessens is currently Deputy Head of the Communication Unit in the
Research Directorate-General at the European Commission. He is also the
editor-in-chief of the research*eu magazine of the European Commission. A
scientific journalist and writer, Michel Claessens has published 250
articles and 8 books on several aspects of modern science and technology. He
is also professor of science communication at the Free University of Brussels.

http://ec.europa.eu/research/research-eu/index_en.html
www.michelclaessens.net

Free to BlueSci members otherwise £2.

Dance - Light Matter: Celebrating 800 years of science through art

Special Cambridge 800th Anniversary Gala - University Senate House

Friday 4 December 7:30pm; Saturday 5 December 6pm (Black Tie preferred)
Tickets £16/£12 concessions (includes interval wine reception)

We invite you to a unique and unforgettable gala evening of new dance, art and music works in the historic Senate House. The performance features world premieres of new dances by Vanessa Fenton of the Royal Ballet and triple award winning contemporary choreographer Katie Green. All live music from 16th century choral work to newly commissioned chamber instrumentals by Jeremy Thurlow, David Earl and Ewan Campbell as well as performance by Theremin virtuoso Lydia Kavina—the grand niece of its inventor!

Further details here. Free online booking here or call (0)1223 300085.

30th November

Join us for the last meeting of term, from 7.30-9pm in room 119 of the Mary Allan Building at Homerton College. We'll end our discussions of all things analogical with a glass of wine and a mince pie or two, and by looking at Simon Armitage's "Modelling the Universe: Poetry, Science, and the Art of Metaphor" in Robert Crawford (ed.) Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science, pp. 110-122 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). A photocopy of this is available in the Whipple Library boxfile. Also, do please bring along any examples you have found of poems with particularly striking use of metaphor, simile, and analogy. All welcome!

Next term

An announcement that the Science and Literature Reading Group's meetings for Lent term 2010 will held on Mondays 18th January, 1st and 15th February, and 1st March, and will be themed around alchemy and chemistry. We will read an array of texts from different time periods and genres, from alchemical poetry to memoir and reportage, and a modern play about the chemical industry. Full details will be announced in December...

CFP - Transcending the Boundaries: doctoral research across disciplines

On Saturday 30th January 2010 the School of Historical Studies at the University of Leicester will host a one-day workshop on 'Transcending the Boundaries: doctoral research across disciplines'.

The workshop aims to attract research students from a variety of academic disciplines, with the intention of building lasting connections between approaches, projects, departments and universities. There will be sessions on themes such as 'Art, material culture and the built environment', 'Conceptual approaches to research' and 'Sources: old and new'.

The School would like to hear from PhD students whose work relates to these themes, and whose research engages with material of ideas from outside the obvious confines of their discipline. While the workshop will have a substantial historical focus, speakers should not be hindered by this requirement.
Papers will be 20 minutes long and should discuss research conducted by the presenter and be of interest to historians - but beyond that be creative!

Abstracts should be submitted to Matt Neale (mpn1@le.ac.uk) by Friday 4th December 2009. Funding for travel costs incurred in attending the workshop will be available for speakers.

16th November

Join us from 7.30-9pm in room 119 of the Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, for the third meeting of term. We'll continue our readings on analogy with the following chapter, a photocopy of which is available in the Whipple Library boxfile:

Mary Ellen Pitts, "Reflective Scientists and the Critique of Mechanistic Metaphor" in M. W. McRae (ed.), The Literature of Science: Perspectives on Popular Scientific Writing, pp. 249-272 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1993).

AHRC Collaborative Research Training programme – ‘Theories and Methods: Literature, Science and Medicine’

Announcing a new AHRC-funded Collaborative Research Training programme on 'Theories and Methods: Literature, Science and Medicine' for doctoral students. Information can be found on our website. The programme will comprise of a number of events over a period of two years.

The programme is being led by the University of Salford, in collaboration with eleven other partners: the Universities of Keele, Leicester, Manchester, King's College London, the London Consortium, the Science Museum, National Maritime Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Royal College of Surgeons, Royal Institution of Great Britain, and the Wellcome Library. Students will be taught by experts with different approaches to disciplinary boundaries, and will be equipped with the skills needed to utilise manuscript sources, rare books, material objects, philosophy, literature, film and visual arts in their study of the connections between literature, science and medicine.

Our first event will be a residential, introductory event, taking place from 4-8 January 2010 at St Deiniol's Library near Chester. There are twenty funded places available for students (including travel, subsistence, and accommodation) and a registration form is now online here. It must be submitted by the closing date of 1 December 2009. We will let successful applicants know that they have a place by 7 December.

The website is developing and soon will also host a social space and learning resources for all to participate in regardless of whether they are attending events on the programme.

Please contact Professor Sharon Ruston (s.ruston@salford.ac.uk) if you have any questions.

Gentner on analogy/metaphor

As promised at last night's seminar, here's a link to Gentner's other work on analogy/metaphor - many of her papers are available to download as pdf files.

Events - 'Two Cultures'

1.)  50 years of Snow's 'Two Cultures', The Royal Institution, Thursday 12 November, featuring Prof Helen Haste, Dr Patricia Fara and Prof Frank James.

For more information and to book tickets, please visit here. The event is open to all and tickets cost £8 standard, £6 concessions, £4 Ri
Members.

2.) Beyond Two Cultures: a multi-disciplinary symposium re-examining the extent of C P Snow's science/humanities divide

 Friday 11 December 2009, Room 1.71, Franklin-Wilkins Building, King’s College London, Stamford Street, SE1 9NH

Open to all. For full details see here. To book visit here or RSVP to leonie.taylor@kcl.ac.uk.

'The Poetry of Science' - Creative Writing and the Artistic Naturalist

6pm, Thursday 5th November, The Linnean Society.

Further details here.

Object Stories

Further details about the Object Stories workshop can be found at Kelley's blog here.

MURE (Morus nigra, L.)

A smooth shiny base, turned like a chess piece,

Is the stage where this mulberry dances

A sumptuous papier-mâché fruit

Seducing us with sugary glances

Her stalk is set at a jaunty angle

Clothed in long stripes of dark green and lime green

The dark spots run through it like Brighton rock

Above it the bulbous fruit reposes

Dark red and black, exploding with sugar

Labels revealing the inner contents

Of the graine ouverte, péricarpe osseux,

The embryou lodged in its secret heart.

Daniel Friesner


The world puzzle
The world was split: brutally, along lines of latitude and radii that ran through the Earth’s core. It lay, set out, upon the table, a dissected planet. The divisions ran sharply across continents and oceans,  cuts of a geometrical sphere that ignored geography and tore over the structures of the Earth’s surface. 
Somehow, gradually, the detail began to creep inside. Line-tendrils from the surface began to snake into the interior, crawling across the blank surfaces of the raw partitions.  Slowly, with muted colours resembling those of lichen, the confusions of the surface crept into the Earth’s interior. A great elephant appeared at the Earth’s core. From America, a vast tree grew into the interior, and on it sat a Native American, talking to a monkey. Last of all, the writing appeared, fitting between the spidery pictures and explaining them. The barren Earth was filled with vegetation, people, and descriptions; the puzzle had solved itself.

Simon Crowhurst

RUR - online

John has helpfully pointed out - for those of us who went to see Rossum's Universal Robots last night - that the full text of the play is online here. Spot the (many) differences...

2nd November

Join us at Homerton College (room MAB119) from 7.30-9pm for our second meeting of term. We'll continue our analogical explorations with Dedre Gentner's "Are Scientific Analogies Metaphors?", from D. Miall's edited collection on Metaphor: Problems and Perspectives, pp. 106-132 (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982). This is available online here.

All are welcome!

Registration open - Nature and the Long Nineteenth Century

Nature and the long nineteenth century is a one-day interdisciplinary postgraduate conference exploring intersections of the natural world with nineteenth-century literature and culture.

University of Edinburgh, Saturday, 6 February 2010.

Keynote speakers: Dr Martin Willis, University of Glamorgan, Dr Christine Ferguson, University of Glasgow, Professor Nick Daly, University College Dublin

In the twenty-first century, environmentalism and the impacts of climate change form a nexus of intense debates about relationships between human culture and the natural world. However, the centrality of the natural world to the nineteenth century imagination has long been acknowledged by scholars, way-marked by Lynn Merrill's The Romance of Victorian Natural History (1989) for example, while Mike Davis's Late Victorian Holocausts: El Nino Famines and the Making of the Third World (2002) demonstrates the relevance of nineteenth-century research to the modern world.

This conference probes the significance of nature to the long nineteenth century and to our study of its literature, history, science, art, and other media. How did the natural world influence people in the nineteenth century?and how did nineteenth-century culture shape attitudes to the natural world? Have twenty-first century questions over nature, climate, and the environment changed the way we view and study the cultural products of the nineteenth century, or offered new avenues for research, especially interdisciplinary research?

Postgraduate and early-career researchers are invited to submit 300 word proposals for 20 minute papers or proposals for panels to natureconference@ed.ac.uk by 16 November 2009. Please include a brief biog with your abstract.

For further information including the full call for papers and registration details, see: www.englit.ed.ac.uk/other/NatureConference/landingpage.htm.

Conference organisers: Claire McKechnie, University of Edinburgh and Dr Emily Alder, Edinburgh Napier University. We are grateful for the support of the British Association for Victorian Studies, the British Society for Literature and Science, and the Centre for Literature and Writing at Edinburgh Napier University.

Play - Rossum's Universal Robots

This week the ADC Theatre here in Cambridge is showing 'Rossum's Universal Robots' as their late show at 11pm.

"In a dark future, Old Rossum has discovered the secret of life. Now his factory manufactures artificial people. Known as 'robots', they toil to ensure that humans live a life of luxury. Once, Helena Glory sought revolution among the robots; now, married to the factory manager, she is complicit in their servitude. But she still dreams of a world where robots are no longer enslaved. And now, as discontent stirs afresh among the robot masses, there is the danger that such a dream will be realised, with devastating consequences for mankind.

First performed in 1921, R.U.R. is the play that invented the word robot. An enduring cautionary tale, it deals with the human desire to dominate and the costs of domination. This dynamic production will find innovative ways to re-tell this classic story, in order to create a new vision of a bleak alternative future."

Some of the Science and Literature Reading Group are attending the play on Thursday evening, and it would be great to see others there!

To book tickets, see here.

Call for papers – 'Booms' of Popular Science Publishing

We are seeking contributions to a one-day symposium on 20th century popular science: the morning devoted to the apparent post-Einstein boom in popular science publishing, the afternoon considering post-Hawking works.

We are keen that this event should help foster connections between the wide range of people who study and think about popular science: historians, science communication researchers, professional scientists, science writers and literary critics.

The event is to be held at Imperial College London on 31st March, 2010. It will comprise of a series of extended 30 minute talks, plus time for discussion.

The mention of Einstein and Hawking should not suggest an interest purely in the popularisation of physics, nor should it imply a focus
on biographical details of their lives, celebrity-science, or challenges of relaying especially abstract ideas in text. We are merely using these two iconic names in the history of popular science as a starting point for broader discussion in what can be a very diffuse topic of inquiry and a prompt to interrogate the reality of so-called 'booms' in popular science publishing.

Papers might explore the impact of other iconic scientists, popular science audiences, marginal scientists publishing through popular
texts, the role of journalists and science-writers and/or the role played by publishers, reviewers and bookselling contexts. We should
also note that we welcome papers which reflection on both the background context and long-term consequences of 20th century popular science. Papers on 19th or 21st century popular science publishing are still of interest, as long as they speak to themes raised by a 20^th century focus.

The broad range of topics potential papers might discuss include (but are not limited to):
* Relationships between scientists and their publics.
* Celebrity, public intellectuals and popular science authorship.
* Marketing and the role of consumer culture.
* Issues of culture and social class.
* Writing for children.
* Implied epistemologies.
* Publishing processes and cultures.
* Outsider-scientist writers.
* Science and Religion.
* The audiences of popular science.
* Popular science's impact on and reflection of science policy issues.
* Humour and comedy in science writing.
* Wonder and the sublime.
* Metaphor.
* Literary renderings of mathematics.
* Illustrations, diagrams, graphics and design.

Potential contributors should email a 500 word abstract (including, if necessary, bibliography) along with a 150 word biography to popularsciencebooms@googlemail.com by 11th December, 2009.

We are planning a special issue for a scholarly journal such as the Public Understanding of Science, based on the event. If you would be
unable to join us on the 31st of March, but are interested in submitting a paper for such a publication, it is worth dropping us an
expression of interest. These, and all other queries, to popularsciencebooms@googlemail.com.

Dr Hauke Riesch, NearCo2 Project, Judge Business School, University of Cambridge.

Dr Alice Bell, Lecturer in Science Communication, Imperial College, London.

Darwin's Bards

 

Play - Inherit the Wind

The Old Vic

Kevin Spacey, David Troughton , Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Directed by Trevor Nunn

To view trailer click here For further information click here.

When science teacher Bertram Cates violates a state law he finds himself at the centre of a court case that not only shakes the United States but resonates across the world.

Considered one of the great American plays of the twentieth century Lawrence and Lee's gripping, relevant drama is inspired by the famous Scopes 'Monkey Trial'. In 1925 school teacher John Scopes stood accused of violating a Tennessee statute by teaching Darwin's theory of evolution to his students. Two legal Titans confront each other when this close knit community puts freedom of thought on trial.

A film version of the play released in 1960 starring Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly received four Academy Award nominations. This production marks the 150th Anniversary of the publication of Darwin's 'The Origin of Species'.

'He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind:
and the fool shall be servant to the wise of heart'
(Proverbs 11:29)

To watch Trevor Nunn and Kevin Spacey talking about Charles Darwin on BBC's Newsnight Review please click here

British Academy Events - Alexander von Humboldt and America

Two events to mark the 150th anniversary of Humboldt’s death, 27 November 2009

The British Academy, 10 Carlton House Terrace, London SW1

Convenors: Professor Marina Warner CBE, FBA, University of Essex, and Professor Peter Hulme, University of Essex

One-day Conference

9.30am - 5.30pm

The 150th anniversary of Humboldt’s death falls this year and this conference will celebrate and interrogate his achievements. The German natural scientist, humanist, and travel writer Alexander von Humboldt (1769–1859) is a familiar name, but his work and thought have been under-explored. They illuminate many contemporary issues, not least the very idea of America.

Among the questions the conference will address are: Just how important was Humboldt for perceptions of America in the nineteenth century and indeed subsequently? With changing history, what does his perspective on Latino/Hispanic history contribute, notably to understandings of Cuba, Mexico and the Andean region? His work also poses deep questions about literary genre: with time his scientific writings are taking on qualities found in poetry or memoir writing. Is the pursuit of knowledge destined to turn into lasting works of imagination? While anthropologists,historians and natural scientists have long valued Humboldt’s data collections, his narrative talents, which allowed him to weave together scientific details with philosophical, literary-aesthetic, social and political insights, have only recently attracted the attention of literary scholars. How adequate are the translations through which English-speaking readers approach his work (originally written in French and German)? How significant was Humboldt as a travel writer? To what extent does his scientific work still have validity and usefulness today?

Registration

Registration is required for this event. Please visit our website for a copy of the programme and to register. Please note that lunch will not be provided, but time will be allowed for attendees to obtain lunch in the surrounding area.

* * * Evening Panel Discussion:

Broadening the Mind: Travellers in Latin America

7.00pm - 8.30pm Chair: Professor Marina Warner, CBE, FBA

After the break-up of the Spanish Empire, Latin America opened its doors to travellers from European countries other than Spain, and many followed in Humboldt’s wake – not least Charles Darwin. Ever since Latin America has attracted European travellers and travel writers. But what exactly do they find there and are their minds broadened by the experience? The evening discussion focuses on four such travellers: from the workshop participants Ottmar Ette will speak about Humboldt and Nigel Leask about Darwin; then two contemporary travel writers (Richard Gott and Richard Fleming) will speak about their experiences travelling in and writing about parts of Latin America.

Speakers

Professor Ottmar Ette (University of Potsdam), principal editor of Humboldt’s work in Germany; Professor Nigel Leask (University of Glasgow), author of Curiosity and the Aesthetics of Travel Writing, 1770–1840: ‘From an Antique Land’; Richard Gott, writer and journalist, author of Land Without Evil: Utopian Journeys Across the South American Watershed; Richard Fleming, writer and journalist, author of Walking to Guantánamo.

Attendance

Registration is not required for this panel discussion (conference registrants will be asked to indicate if they wish to attend). Seats will be allocated on arrival.

Seminar Series - The Victorians and Science

AUTUMN TERM 2009: The Victorians and Science
Convenor: Ana Vadillo (Birkbeck)

17 October 2009, 11am, Room G37 (Senate House, South Block, Ground Floor)
Dr. Adelene Buckland (University of Cambridge), ‘Lyell’s Plots’
Dr. Angelique Richardson (University of Exeter), ‘Hardy and Biology’

14 November 2009, 11am, Room G37 (Senate House, South Block, Ground Floor)
Dr. Gowan Dawson (University of Leicester), ‘Palaeontology in Parts: Serializing Science in the Penny Cyclopædia 1833-43′
Dr John Holmes (University of Reading), ‘Darwinism in Victorian Poetry’

12 December 2009, 11am, Room G37 (Senate House, South Block, Ground Floor)
PANEL: After Darwin’s Plots
Professor David Amigoni (Keele University), ‘Fields of Inheritance: Science, Literature and their Relations after Darwin’s Plots’
Professor Gillian Beer (University of Cambridge), ‘Emotions, Beauty, Consciousness: late Darwin’
Professor Daniel Brown (University of Western Australia), ‘Egerton’s Keynotes: Darwinian naturalism and fin-de-siècle fetishism.’

Further details here.

Play - Let Newton Be!

Menagerie Theatre Company's new play, Let Newton Be! will be performed this Friday, 23rd October, 7.30pm, Robinson Theatre, Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge. For further information, see here. To book tickets, see here. They say:

Isaac Newton - heretic, alchemist, scientist. A devout, difficult, obsessive man who sought and found God in universal laws of light and motion.

These brilliant discoveries and innovations were part of a greater project that took in other, more dangerous ideas which he was forced to keep secret.

Isaac Newton remains a great influence, within the scientific world. His shadow looms large, not least in Cambridge, his home and workplace for 35 years. However, he remains a mystery to many which is why a new play about Newton hits the stage this October, appealing to both specialist and general audiences alike.

Let Newton Be! brings Isaac Newton to life, using his own words and those of his contemporaries. It is a verbatim play, the script drawn entirely from correspondence to, from or about Newton. Let Newton Be! focusses on the collision between his unorthodox religious beliefs and his radical experiments with light & optics.

Craig Baxter weaves a compelling narrative showing Newton in many different lights. We see him as the young boy measuring the speed of wind. We see him as the isolated Cambridge scholar, practising alchemy in the secrecy of his darkened room. We see him as the autocrat of British Science, ruling the Royal Society with an iron fist. Above all, we see Newton as a human being - complex, comical, driven and vulnerable.

Let Newton Be! shows why Newton is as controversial as he is famous. He was an enormously difficult personality, often in dispute with ‘colleagues’ who he despised, mistrusted or undermined. However, the play aims to illuminate not to denigrate. It looks more at a man in dispute with himself who asked fundamental questions about our world. In doing so, he changed the world forever.

Written by Craig Baxter

Directed by Patrick Morris

Designed by Issam Kourbaj, Artist in Residence, Christ’s College

Performers:
Neil Jones
Paul McCleary
Caroline Rippin

Poet in the Parlour

This week Kelley Swain will be resident as Poet in the Parlour at the Whipple Museum, Monday-Friday from 12.30-4.30. Come along and have a chat about science and literature!

‘Slashing through our millennial gloom’ – Futurists prickling the English

To celebrate the founding manifesto of Futurism in 1909 we invite you to an interactive exhibition that brings the sounds, sights and sensations of the era to life. Here you may borrow from the Futurists in your own style: using caution or abandon as you shoot at popular culture in a Vorticist game of space invaders, manipulate sounds of the city to create a new sonata, deform words into wriggling poetic scores, produce updated manifestos for the year 2009 and even participate in a Futurist performance at the end of the afternoon.

Featuring the spectacular Dutch dada performer chacha who will present a selection of sound poetry at 3pm.

Everyone is welcome to attend this interactive exhibition on Saturday 24 October, in the Recital Hall at Anglia Ruskin University (East Road, Cambridge), from 1-4pm. Suitable for all ages.

Please call 0845 196 3826 or email festivalbookings@anglia.ac.uk to book your FREE place.

19th October

Our first meeting of term will be held from 7.30-9pm in room 119 in the Mary Allan Building, Homerton College, Hills Road, Cambridge.

We begin our readings on analogy with a classic piece by Pierre Duhem, a photocopy of which is available in the Group boxfile in the Whipple Library.

Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton University Press, 1954), chapter IV (pp. 55-104), "Abstract theories and mechanical models".

All are welcome!

Wellcome workshop - Medicine and Literature

1st December, 2-3pm, Wellcome Library, London

Whether you're interested in Love in the Time of Cholera or scaling The Magic Mountain, this workshop will help you explore the relationship between medicine and literature, through the resources of the Wellcome Library.

To book see here.

Talk - Poems of Space

10^th November, 19:00-20:45, National Maritime Museum Lecture Theatre, £8

Renowned astronomer Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell explores the connections between poetry and science and her experience of compiling Dark Matter, an anthology of poems inspired by astronomy. Followed by a discussion with poet Kelley Swain (Darwin’s Microscope) and astronomer/writer Dr Pippa Goldschmidt. Futher details here.

Tickets from the NMM Bookings Office: 020 8312 6608, bookings@nmm.ac.uk

Journal of Literature and Science - Vol II out now

The second volume of the Journal of Literature and Science has now been published.
This issue contains articles on:

The ichthyosaurus and its representations by JOHN GLENDENING
Hoffmann's motifs of physical movement by VAL SCULLION
The sonnet and geometry by MATTHEW CHIASSON & JANINE ROGERS

Additionally there are reviews of recent journal articles by Laura Voracheck,
Anna Henchman, Mandy Reid and Danielle Coriale.

The JLS is online and free to access and can be found here.


The JLS is now accepting submissions for articles, and reviews of
recent journal articles for future issues. Please make any enquiries with the
Editor-in-Chief, Martin Willis, on mwillis@glam.ac.uk.

Oxford Literature and Science Seminar - Michaelmas 2009

Hawkins Room, Fellows' Quad, staircase 3
Merton College

Friday 30 October (3rd week), 2pm
Professor David Amigoni (Keele): ‘Charles Darwin’s centenary and the politics and poetics of parenting: inheritance, variation, and the aesthetic legacy of Samuel Butler’

Friday 27 November (7th week), 2pm
Dr John Holmes (Reading): ‘Darwinism in Victorian Poetry’

PhD studentships in ‘Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period’

Application deadline: 15/11/2008

The PhD-Net “Internationalisation of Literature and Science since the Early Modern Period” is a bi-national PhD programme run collaboratively by King’s College London and the University of Stuttgart, which aims to forge interdisciplinary connections between various subjects in the Humanities (German Studies, English Studies, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and the Histories of Medicine, Science and Technology). Partner institutions in Germany include the German Literature Archive in Marbach and the Institute for the History of Medicine of the Robert Bosch Foundation.

An international research group will support and connect projects which address both inter- and trans-national tendencies within the Humanities. Projects will develop both theoretical models for the as yet under-researched area of internationalisation within the Humanities, as well as critically assess historical case studies from the early modern period onwards, which address the role of exchange movements and networks and the transfer of topics, practices and methods in literature and science. Of particular interest is the relevance of literature(s) for the internationalisation of the sciences, alongside critical reflections on the significance of the presentation and the mediality of knowledge (language, text, image) for its circulation, communication and implementation.

For further info, including application procedure, please click here or contact Ben Schofield (benedict.schofield@kcl.ac.uk).

Cambridge Literary Review

The first issue of the Cambridge Literary Review is now available: orders can be made online via the website.

Issue #1 includes:

Poetry & fiction from:
Richard Berengarten, Emily Critchley, Debora Greger, John James, Justin Katko & Jow Lindsay, John Kinsella, Charles Lambert, Tom Lowenstein, Helen Macdonald, John Matthias, Anna Mendelssohn, Marianne Morris, Ian Patterson, J.H. Prynne, Peter Riley, Luke Roberts, Avery Slater, Rosie Šnajdr, Josh Stanley, Keston Sutherland, Timothy Thornton, and John Wilkinson.

Essays:
Raymond Geuss, 'Vix intellegitur'
Stefan Collini, 'Understanding and judgement in the humanities'
Rebecca Stott, 'Tangling with history'
Philip Pettit on the Cambridge Review

Feature: On Cambridge Poetry
Jeremy Noel-Tod, 'A History of Difficulty: On Cambridge Poetry'
Andrew Duncan introducing Charles Madge's 'The Storming of the Brain' (1950)
Peter Riley introducing a selection of poems by Raymond Crump
Elaine Feinstein on Prospect
Richard Berengarten on the 1975 Cambridge Poetry Festival
Gareth Farmer on Veronica Forrest-Thomson
John Hall on Douglas Oliver's 'Arrondissements'
Rod Mengham on Andrew Crozier's 'Free Running Bitch'
Christina McLeish on Roger Langley and Nigel Wheale
Robert Archambeau, 'Public Faces In Private Places: Messianic Privacy in Cambridge Poetry'
Marianne Morris 'On Disorder'

Steampunk Art @ Oxford

The Oxford Museum of the History of Science has a new Steampunk exhibition opening on 13th October. See the exhibition blog here, the special edition of Broad Sheet here, and details of planned events here.

BSLS Book Prize 2009

The British Society for Literature and Science is pleased to invite nominations for the annual BSLS Book Prize. The prize of £150 will be awarded to the best book published in English in 2009 in the field of literature and science. Monographs, edited volumes, editions and books of creative writing are all eligible for consideration, excepting books wholly or partly written by members of the BSLS executive.

Please send nominations, giving the author, title and publisher, to Dr John Holmes (book-prize convenor) at j.r.holmes@reading.ac.uk, with 'BSLS Book Prize' as the subject heading. The deadline for receipt of nominations is 16 January 2009.

* The book prize was launched in 2007. The past winners are Ralph O'Connor for 'The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856' (University of Chicago Press, 2007) and George Levine for 'Realism, Ethics and Secularism: Essays on Victorian Literature and Science' (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

* Nominations are invited from BSLS members and from publishers. The authors or editors of the nominated books need not be BSLS members. BSLS members are welcome to nominate their own books.

* The book must have 2009 as its publication date.

* The winner of this year's prize will be announced at the fifth annual conference of the BSLS in April 2010 at Northumbria University.

* The prize will be paid by means of a cheque made out in pounds sterling.

Michaelmas Term 2009

This term we shall focus on the theme of analogy in literature and science, reading and discussing analyses of simile, metaphor, and model-making. We meet fortnightly on Monday evenings, from 7.30-9pm, in a new venue: room MAB 119 at Homerton College. Readings are detailed below, and photocopied packs will be made available from the Group boxfile in the Whipple Library and in Homerton College Library. Organised by Daniel Friesner (Science Museum) and Melanie Keene (Homerton College). For updates, further information and relevant news listings please see this blog; email Melanie to join our dedicated mailing list. All welcome!

19^th October

Pierre Duhem, The Aim and Structure of Physical Theory, trans. Philip P. Wiener (Princeton University Press, 1954), chapter IV (pp. 55-104), "Abstract theories and mechanical models".

2^nd November

Dedre Gentner, "Are Scientific Analogies Metaphors?" in D. Miall (ed.), Metaphor: Problems and perspectives, pp. 106-132 (Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1982). Available online here.

16^th November

Mary Ellen Pitts, "Reflective Scientists and the Critique of Mechanistic Metaphor" in M. W. McRae (ed.), The Literature of Science: Perspectives on Popular Scientific Writing, pp. 249-272 (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1993).

30^th November

Simon Armitage, "Modelling the Universe: Poetry, Science, and the Art of Metaphor" in Robert Crawford (ed.) Contemporary Poetry and Contemporary Science, pp. 110-122 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

UTTER! Evolution

'Utter!' Spoken Word presents our first show in our new home:

'UTTER!' Evolution - A natural selection of the very fittest poets and
comics to celebrate Darwin's 200th anniversary year, including: Robin
Ince, Niall O'Sullivan, Baba Brinkman, Kelley Swain, Richard Tyrone
Jones, & the AjarMic contest.

Last one 'attending' is a Creationist!


Thursday, October 15, 2009, 7:30pm - 10:30pm
£5 before 7.30pm, £10 after so get there early!
The Cross Kings, 126 York Way, east side of King's Cross
(the nearest tube & station)

Facebook event: http://bit.ly/utterevol
Contact: 07912539098 / richardtyronejones@gmail.com


Robin Ince
You've seen him at Latitude, supporting Ricky Gervais, or maybe on
Mock the Week, Skins, doing FOUR shows a day at the 2009 Edinburgh
Fringe, or his live DVD. He's won a Time Out Award for Outstanding
Achievement in Comedy and toured his brilliant night 'Book Club' night
around the UK. Militant bleeding heart liberal and botherer of
God-botherers, Robin's erudite performances are often part-comedy,
part-lecture, always entertaining and amusingly indignant.


Baba Brinkman
Won a Fringe First for his latest show 'The Rap Guide to Evolution'
and has both a B.A. Hons and an M.A. in Medieval and Renaissance
English Literature. Baba draws parallels between the worlds of hip-hop
music, genetics and literary poetry.

In the summer of 2004, Baba toured his hit show "The Rap Canterbury
Tales" to seven cities including Prague, Montreal, Edinburgh and San
Francisco. Since 2004 he has toured almost constantly worldwide.


Niall O'Sullivan
As seen on the BBC as the Wimbledon Championships' Poet-in-residence,
and host of the the Poetry cafe's long-running flagships Poetry
Unplugged and The Cellar, Niall's second book 'Ventriloquism for
Monkeys' overflows with accessible and intelligent work which explores
faith, the modern city and anthropolaelont- Paleoanthropolopo- er, ape
men.


Kelley Swain
Writer in residence at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science at
Cambridge University and author of well-received poetry collection
'Darwin's Microscope' (Flambard press), using the 'lens' as a metaphor
for viewing the world with secular wonder, revealing greater meaning
in looking deeper.

"One poem cannily includes a extract from Emily Dickinson, and there
is an elegy for a father told - with an admirably Dickinsonian 'slant'
- through the mating habits of a sea turtle. Bravura!" - Anna
Woodford, Mslexia


Ajar mic: You vote to decide who wins a PAID gig and a place in the
Ajar Mic final on Nov 19th. Will it be.... Michelle Madsen, Fran
Isherwood, Ashna Sarkar or
there's a FREE SLOT! GET IN TOUCH...Bringing all your friends to vote
for you is, by the way, positively encouraged!


Plus the winner of our last ajar mic contest, MC and Hammer & Tongue
London slam finalist Charlie Dupre will also be rising to the theme!


Hosted by, and featuring a special reading by Richard Tyrone Jones
from his debut contribution to humanity's extended phenotype,
Germline: 'Often witty, sometimes unsettling and always smart' -
Edinburgh comedy award winner Tim Key. Richard shares a birthday with
Darwin. Well I'll be a monkey's uncle...

The Way of the Panda

Henry Nicholls is blogging about his new book at The Way of the Panda. He says:

The way of the panda is the subtitle for my next book, which will cover the 140-year journey the panda has taken from complete obscurity to the most celebrated zoological entity on the planet. So I'll be posting about what it's like to research and write a popular science book, there should be lots of fascinating panda-related facts and plenty of reflections on the conservation movement more generally.

CFP - Victorian Literature and Science

 The second issue of Victorian Network, guest edited by Dr Ian Henderson (King’s College London), seeks to showcase new research into the connections between Victorian literature and the sciences.

Since the publication of Gillian Beer’s seminal Darwin’s Plots (1983), the study of Victorian science and literature as interrelated cultural practices has risen to be one of the largest and most dynamic fields within Victorian Studies. We are inviting submissions of no more than 7000 words that investigate the ways in which scientific disciplines, debates, practices and venues shaped the Victorian cultural imagination. A prize of £50 will be awarded to the best paper submitted. We reserve the right to withhold the prize.

Topics might include but are not limited to:
The shared forms, aesthetics and poetics of literary and scientific discourses
Victorian literature and nineteenth-century popular scientific entertainment
Gendered scientific practices in Victorian literature and culture
Science as a form of political / social critique in Victorian literature
Literary criticism and science in the Victorian period
Victorian culture and the imperial sciences
Literary and scientific modes of ordering knowledge
Affect and emotion in Victorian literature and science

We are also inviting postgraduates to present their research to a non-specialist readership by submitting short articles of circa 2000 wordsfor our outreach page, Victorian Wire. The CfP and more details about the outreach project can be found on Victorian Wire. We are offering a prize of £25 to the best short article submitted. We reserve the rightto withhold the prize.

All submissions should conform to MHRA style conventions and the in-house submission guidelines as set out here. The deadline for submissions to our next issue is November 1 2009. Please send submissions to: victoriannetwork@gmail.com

UPDATE - EXTENDED DEADLINE OF DECEMBER 1 2009

Literary Events at the Whipple Museum

"Darwin's Bards: Poetry in the Age of Evolution"

Thursday October 22nd, 6-7.30pm

Over the hundred and fifty years since Darwin discovered Natural Selection, poets have explored the implications of his ideas for what it means to be a human being. Poetry not only makes us think about Darwinism in new ways, it enables us to feel more acutely and to understand more completely our own Darwinian condition.

In this talk, John Holmes, the author of Darwin's Bards, will explore some of the ways in which modern and contemporary poets have responded to Darwinism in their poems. With readings from Ted Hughes, Edwin Morgan, Amy Clampitt and others, he will make the case for poetry's crucial role at a time when we need more urgently than ever to come to terms with Darwin's legacy.

John Holmes is a lecturer in English at the University of Reading and Director of the Modern Studies Centre for Research in 19th, 20th and 21st Century Literature. He is the author of Darwin's Bards: British and American Poetry in the Age of Evolution (Edinburgh University Press, 2009), Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the Late Victorian Sonnet Sequence: Sexuality, Belief and the Self (Ashgate, 2005) and numerous articles on Victorian, modern and Renaissance literature.

"Object Stories" creative writing workshop

Katy Price and Kelley Swain (Whipple Museum Poet in Residence) will be giving a creative writing workshop. Pre-booking essential.

Thursday 29th October 2009, 6-8pm
Whipple Museum of the History of Science
Tickets for this event are free and may be reserved by emailing jf411@cam.ac.uk

New venue!

Next term the group will meet at a new venue - room MAB119 at Homerton College.

CFP - BSLS 2010

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 5th annual conference of the British Society for Literature and Science will take place at Northumbria University in Newcastle on 8-10 April 2010.

Keynote speakers will include John Dupré, Professor of Philosophy of Science at Exeter University; Nick Daly, Professor of English Literature at University College Dublin; and Patricia Waugh, Professor of English Literature at Durham University.

The Society invites proposals for twenty-minute research papers addressing any aspect of the interaction between literature and science; collaborative panels of two or three papers; and papers or panels on the teaching of literature and science. We welcome work on literature from all periods and countries, and onall aspects of science, including medicine and technology. Presenters need notbe based in UK institutions.

Please email paper proposals of up to 300 words and a short biographical noteto the conference organizers Dr Peter Garratt and Dr Vike Martina Plock at Northumbria University (bsls@northumbria.ac.uk) by Monday, 21 December 2009. Please send abstracts in the body of the message; do not use attachments. Please address any queries to Dr Peter Garratt and Dr Vike Martina Plock at the email address above.

Symposium – Euclidean Geometry in 19th-Century Culture

A symposium on Euclidean geometry in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century British culture will be held in Cambridge, UK, 1-2 October 2009.

Speakers include Professors Dame Gillian Beer, Joan L. Richards, Jeremy Gray, Marilyn Gaull, Linda Henderson and Robin Wilson. This interdisciplinary symposium aims to explore the story of Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometry in the nineteenth century, and to investigate the relationships of geometry and artistic culture from Romanticism to Modernism.

The symposium will be held at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH), and is funded by the European Research Council. Anyone interested in Victorian mathematics or culture is very welcome to attend. The regular fee is £20; a reduced rate is available.

Further information and the programme are available here.

Next term - Analogy

Our theme for next term's meetings will be 'Analogy' in science and literature. Meetings will be held on Mondays 19th October, and 2nd, 16th, and 30th November, from 7.30-9pm.

Watch out for further details soon...

British Science Festival: The Tables Turned

A performance by the BSHS Outreach and Education Committee.

‘The Tables Turned’ takes its audience to a dinner-party séance of the 1860s.

A film will show characters – including a physicist, poet, physician and medium – attempting to summon the spirits.

Through conversations on, and responses to, the evening’s events – table-rapping, ghostly messages and emanations – questions over the authority of men of science in the realm of the supernatural, and over scientific methods themselves, will be raised.

What is the limit of scientific knowledge? How do we test phenomena? Can we believe what we see? The audience and characters will analyse the problems of fact-making and observation, of orthodoxy and heterodoxy, in the cultural context of Victorian Britain.

Performances:

• Wednesday 9th, 9pm (main programme)
• Wednesday 9th (KS3/4) and Thursday 10th (KS5), 10.30am, 12.30pm, 2pm (Young People’s Programme)

Funded by the Wellcome Trust.

For further information and booking see the British Science Association website.

British Science Festival: William Wordsworth at the British Association? Literature and Culture in the Early Years of the BSA

Wednesday 9th September, 16.00-17.00

Venue: Austin Pearce 3

In association with the Research Centre for Literature, Arts and Science at the University of Glamorgan. With thanks to the University of Glamorgan Strategic Insight Partnership Scheme for helping to fund this event.

Presenter: Dr Martin Willis, University of Glamorgan

In the early years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1831-1851) it was not just scientists who enjoyed the annual meetings and various reports and discussions, but other men of culture too. This event explores some of the relationships between the early BA and key literary, artistic and cultural figures. Additionally, the event will show how the scientists of the BA used literary and artistic works in their scientific reports and in the Presidential Addresses.

The core message of the event, therefore, is to reveal that science was always part of wider social activity and creativity, and that the BSA’s interactions with society are not new but an evolved version of the original BAAS’s conception.

See the British Science Festival website for booking and further information.

British Science Festival: Culture Clash – The Two Cultures 50 Years On

An afternoon meeting at the University of Surrey, 8 September 2009

Fifty years ago, C P Snow claimed there were 'two cultures' - with an unbridgeable gulf between literary culture and that of science and technology. The idea sparked widespread controversy, which has continued ever since.

This meeting, which is part of the British Science Festival at the University of Surrey (Guildford), takes a critical look at Snow's notorious idea and its enduring appeal. Have the two cultures moved any closer? And what do they imply for the larger questions he raised about education, economic development, and global inequality?

Chair: Jon Turney

Speakers:

Prof Robert Bud (Science Museum): The Two Cultures: a 20th century dilemma

Dr Ted Nield (Editor, Geoscientist magazine): What did CP Snow really say and what did he mean?

Prof Raymond Tallis (University of Manchester): After the Two Cultures: can we meet Snow's challenge?

Date: Tuesday 8 September 2009

Time: 4.00­6.00 pm

Organised by: General Section, British Science Association

For more information and booking, please see the British Science Festival website.