Faraday Michael Christmas lecture detail

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures are a series of lectures on a single topic each, which have been held at the

Royal Institution The Royal Institution of Great Britain (often the Royal Institution, Ri or RI) is an organisation for scientific education and research, based in the City of Westminster. It was founded in 1799 by the leading British scientists of the age, inc ...

in London each year since 1825, missing 1939–1942 because of the Second World War. The lectures present scientific subjects to a general audience, including young people, in an informative and entertaining manner.

Michael Faraday Michael Faraday (; 22 September 1791 – 25 August 1867) was an English scientist who contributed to the study of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inductio ...

initiated the Christmas Lecture series in 1825, at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. Faraday presented nineteen series of lectures in all.

History

The

's Christmas Lectures were first held in 1825, and have continued on an annual basis since then except for four years during the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. They have been hosted each year at the Royal Institution itself, except in 1929 and between 2005–2006, each time due to refurbishment of the building. They were created by

, who later hosted the lecture season on nineteen occasions. The Nobel laureate Sir William Bragg gave the Christmas lectures on four occasions, and his co-laureate son Sir Lawrence Bragg gave them twice. Other notable lecturers have included Desmond Morris (1964), Eric Laithwaite (1966 & 1974), Sir

George Porter George Porter, Baron Porter of Luddenham (6 December 1920 – 31 August 2002) was a British chemist. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1967. Education and early life Porter was born in Stainforth, near Thorne, in the then We ...

(1969 & 1976), Sir

David Attenborough Sir David Frederick Attenborough (; born 8 May 1926) is an English broadcaster, biologist, natural historian and author. He is best known for writing and presenting, in conjunction with the BBC Natural History Unit, the nine natural histor ...

(1973), Heinz Wolff (1975),

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is research on ...

(1977),

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An at ...

(1991), Baroness Susan Greenfield (1994), Dame Nancy Rothwell (1998), Monica Grady (2003),

Sue Hartley Susan Elaine Hartley is a British ecologist and is Vice-President for Research at the University of Sheffield. Previously she was director of thYork Environmental Sustainability Institute(YESI) at the University of York and Professor of Ecolog ...

(2009), Alison Woollard (2013), Danielle George (2014), and Saiful Islam (2016). The props for the lectures are designed and created by the RI's science demonstration technician, a post which Faraday previously held. A popular technician, with the advent of television, serving from 1948 to 1986, was Bill Coates. The technician is informed of the general subject of the lectures during spring, but the specifics aren't settled until September, with the recordings made in mid-December. By 2009, the lectures had expanded to a series of five sessions each year. However, in 2010 the Royal Institution cut back on costs as it had become over £2 million in debt. These cost-cutting measures included the budget allotted to the Christmas Lectures. This resulted in a reduction from five sessions to three.

Television

A single Christmas Lecture, by G. I. Taylor, was the first to be televised, in 1936, on the BBC's fledgling Television Service. They were broadcast on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network owned and operated by the BBC. It covers a wide range of subject matter, with a remit "to broadcast programmes of depth and substance" in contrast to the more mainstream ...

from 1966 to 1999 and

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

from 2000 to 2004. In 2000 one of the lectures was broadcast live for the first time. Following the end of Channel 4's contract to broadcast the lectures, there were concerns that they might simply be dropped from scheduling as the channel was negotiating with the Royal Institution over potential changes to the format, while the BBC announced that "The BBC will not show the lectures again, because it feels the broadcasting environment has moved on in the last four years." Channel Five subsequently agreed to show the lectures from 2005 to 2008, an announcement which was met with derision from academics. The lectures were broadcast on

More4 More4 is a British free-to-air television channel, owned by Channel Four Television Corporation. The channel launched on 10 October 2005. Its programming mainly focuses on lifestyle and documentaries, as well as foreign dramas. Content When ...

in 2009. In 2010, the lectures returned to the BBC after a ten-year absence from the broadcaster, and have been shown on

BBC Four BBC Four is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It was launched on 2 March 2002

each year since then. Royal Institution Lecture Theatre

In 1994, Professor Susan Greenfield became the first female scientist to present the Christmas Lectures. The first non-white science lecturer was Kevin Fong in 2015, and in August 2020 it was announced that Professor Christopher Jackson would jointly present the 2020 lecture series, thus becoming the first black scientist to do so. In January 2022, the RI launched an appeal to trace copies of those televised lectures which are missing from the BBC's archives, these being the complete series of five lectures each from 1966, 1967, 1969, 1970 and 1971, plus one episode of

's 1973 lectures, "The language of animals".

List of Christmas lectures

1825 to 1965

The following is a complete list of the Christmas Lectures from 1825 to 1965:

Since 1966

The following is a list of televised Christmas Lectures from 1966 onward :

References

External links

Christmas Lectures online
(The Ri Channel) * {{Michael Faraday Annual events in the United Kingdom BBC Television shows British lecture series Channel 4 original programming Channel 5 (British TV channel) original programming Christmas in the United Kingdom Education in London Christmas Lectures Recurring events established in 1825 Science education in the United Kingdom December events Science and technology in the United Kingdom 1825 establishments in the United Kingdom