Entertaining Lecture By Sir Lawrence Bragg

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29315, 21 September 1960, Page 17

Entertaining Lecture By Sir Lawrence Bragg

The foundation of the Royal Institution, London, the great men who have worked there, and its development as a centre for studying the art of popular lecturing was described by Sir Lawrence Bragg last evening in a witty lecture to the Canterbury branch of the Royal Society of New Zealand. Sir Lawrence Bragg delivered the most entertaining lecture heard for a long time in Room 15 at Canterbury University, having his audience of more than 100 continually chuckling and laughHe received a most enthusiastic round of applause for what Professor R. S. Allan, who proposed the vote of thanks, described aS “a gem of a lecture.” For 150 years, the Royal Institution had been an institution to promote the art of studying and talking about science—“just as you have a school of ballet or theatrical work,” Sir Lawrence Bragg said. The real foundation of the Royal Institution was due to Sir Humphry Davy, who had turned it into “a kind of Covent Garden for science,” he said. “He made it a place you went to if you wanted to know about the exciting discoveries in natural philosophy,” Sir Lawrence Bragg said. “People would say: ‘Where shall we go today? —Yes, the Royal Institution.’ ’’ “It became the lone thing,” Sir Lawrence Bragg said. Sir Lawrence Bragg mentioned some of Davy’s early experiments, recalling the old lines: Sir Humphry Davy Abominated gravy. He lived in the odium Of having discovered sodium. Davy’s first attempts at making a miner’s lamp were still preserved at the institution, Sir Lawrence Bragg said. The institution was a treasure house of the notes, papers, books, and objects made by many famolis scientists. Davy was followed by Faraday, a wonderful scientist who was

ranked with Newton, Sir .Lawrence Bragg said. It was at the Royal Institution that Faraday had once given a lecture at short notice (“after the actual lecturer had run away,” said Sir Lawrence Bragg, amid laughter), during which he first put forward his theory on electromagnetic waves.

Faraday was followed by Tyndall, well known for his work on glaciers. “He also showed tremendous enthusiasm for teaching science in schools,” said Sir Lawrence Bragg. “He even insisted science should be taught in the English public schools—but he didn’t have much success there.” (Laughter.) Sir Lawrence Bragg described the institution’s “Friday evening discourses” given by famous scientists, “with the audience in evening dress and the lecturer in a white tie.” and the Christmas lectures "adapted for a juvenile audietry," as the institution’s prospectus put it. He also described a series of lectures for schoolchildren which he had initiated, at which they could see experiments they read about in their textbooks. Held twice a week during the school terms, they catered for an audience of 500 children.