Annual Lecture

Jonathon Porritt CBE, will give the Society's 2010 seventh Annual Lecture on Tuesday 23rd March 2010, entitled Engineering a Low Growth Economy. Jonathon will give his view on why politicians love to tell us that we can have a very low-carbon society (with 80% cuts in greenhouse gases required by 2050) and high economic growth at the same time. He believes that to have any chance of achieving our carbon reduction targets, we need both "full-on decoupling" (in other words, creating long-term economic value with a massively reduced throughput of energy and raw materials), and an economy based on well being not growth. That means that today's rich will need to consume less, not more. That’s the bottom line behind today’s climate change agenda. So why are so few politicians even talking about it?

Founder Director of Forum for the Future, he is also an eminent writer, broadcaster and commentator on sustainable development. He was formerly Chairman of the UK Sustainable Development Commission (2000-2009) and Director of Friends of the Earth. Click here to book a place.

Professor Ian Stewart, FRS gave the Society's 2009 Sixth Annual Lecture on Monday, 23rd March 2009, entitled After Darwin's Watch. A prolific author for the lay-reader as well as a world-renown mathematician specialising in fiendishly difficult fields such as topology, Ian Stewart has often appeared on radio and TV, and gave the Royal Institution 1997 Christmas Lectures. He was aptly qualified to give this Lecture in the 200th anniversary year of Charles Darwin's birth, having written widely on the subject of evolution, including co-authoring the Science of Discworld series with Lunarman Jack Cohen and Terry Pratchett, the last of which was called . . . Darwin's Watch.

The Society's Fifth Annual Lecture The Challenges for Medicine in the 21st Century was delivered by the UK's Chief Medical Officer, Sir Liam Donaldon on 5 March 2008 in the Leonard Deacon Theatre at Birmingham Medical School. Sir Liam was introduced by Professor Ian Booth, and the event chaired by Lunar Society Chair Professor Deirdre Kelly.

The Fourth Annual Lecture Engineering the Future by Sir John Armitt, then Chief Executive of Network Rail on 20 March 2007, can be downloaded here. The evening was was chaired by Professor Michael Clarke, Vice Principal of the University of Birmingham.

The Third Annual Lecture Climate Change and what to do about it was by Professor Sir John Lawton, Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution.

The Second Annual Lecture Great Ideas in Biology was by Nobel Prizewinner (and University of Birmingham graduate) Professor Sir Paul Nurse, ninth President of the Rockefeller University. A report of his Lecture can be read here.

The First Annual Lecture The Portrait and the Country House was by Professor Brian Allen, then Chairman of the National Arts Collection Fund.