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. 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 chemist and physicist who contributed to the study of electrochemistry and electromagnetism. His main discoveries include the principles underlying electromagnetic inducti ...

conceived and initiated the Christmas Lecture series in 1825, at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. Many of the Christmas Lectures were published.

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. They have been hosted each year at the Royal Institution itself, except in 1929 and between 2005 and 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 Sir William Lawrence Bragg (31 March 1890 – 1 July 1971) was an Australian-born British physicist who shared the 1915 Nobel Prize in Physics with his father William Henry Bragg "for their services in the analysis of crystal structure by m ...

gave them twice. Other notable lecturers have included

Desmond Morris Desmond John Morris FLS ''hon. caus.'' (born 24 January 1928) is an English zoologist, ethologist and surrealist painter, as well as a popular author in human sociobiology. He is known for his 1967 book ''The Naked Ape'', and for his televis ...

(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 West ...

(1969 & 1976), Sir

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

(1973), Heinz Wolff (1975),

Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan (; ; November 9, 1934December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer, planetary scientist and science communicator. His best known scientific contribution is his research on the possibility of extraterrestrial life, including e ...

(1977),

Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biology, evolutionary biologist, zoologist, science communicator and author. He is an Oxford fellow, emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Simonyi Professor for the Publ ...

(1991), Susan Greenfield (1994), Dame Nancy Rothwell (1998), Monica Grady (2003), Sue Hartley (2009),

Alison Woollard Alison Woollard (born 1968) is a British biologist. She is a lecturer in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Oxford where she is also a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. Early life and education Woollard was born in 1968 in K ...

(2013), Danielle George (2014), and Saiful Islam (2016). 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. 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 are not 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, and this resulted in a reduction from five sessions to three.

Television

A 15-minute preview of a Christmas Lecture by

G. I. Taylor Sir Geoffrey Ingram Taylor Order of Merit, OM Royal Society of London, FRS FRSE (7 March 1886 – 27 June 1975) was a British physicist and mathematician, who made contributions to fluid dynamics and wave theory. Early life and education Tayl ...

was the first to be televised, in December 1936, on the BBC's fledgling Television Service. Occasional lectures were broadcast in the subsequent decades, and each series was broadcast in its entirety on

BBC Two BBC Two is a British free-to-air Public service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, public broadcast television channel owned and operated by the BBC. It is the corporation's second flagship channel, and it covers a wide range of subject matte ...

from 1966 to 1999 and

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television channel owned and operated by Channel Four Television Corporation. It is state-owned enterprise, publicly owned but, unlike the BBC, it receives no public funding and is funded en ...

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 The i ...

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 service broadcasting in the United Kingdom, 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 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) * {{Christmas Annual events in the United Kingdom 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 Science and technology in the United Kingdom 1825 establishments in the United Kingdom BBC Television Service (TV network) original programming BBC Two original programming