ISSUE 49 WINTER 2015 rThee Newslettersourc of Scotland’s Nationale Academy The Order of Merit (OM) is a special honour in the sole gift of the Sovereign and is restricted to a maximum of 24 living recipients. Three of the current recipients were present at the RSE one evening during a busy week in November 2015. Pictured (l–r) are Professor Sir Michael Atiyah, Sir David Attenborough and Professor Sir Roger Penrose. Details of the conference in which they participated, and of other events that week, are available inside. Also featured in this issue: Science and the Parliament Comments on the BBC and GM crops Stampy delivers the Christmas Lecture resource WINTER 2015 One extraordinary week at the RSE The week beginning 9 November 2015 was an extremely busy one at the RSE, with three prestigious events running during the week and a plenitude of speakers of the highest calibre. Inspiring Brilliance: Celebrating Maxwell’s Genius and Legacy The James Clerk Maxwell Conference on Monday 9 November celebrated the 150th anniversary of the publication of Maxwell’s Equations. As part of the celebrations, a plaque to mark the occasion had been unveiled the previous week by Dr Alasdair Allan MSP, the Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Language (pictured right, on left) and Sir Michael Atiyah OM PPRS PPRSE. The plaque is situated in front of the James Clerk Maxwell statue near the RSE, in George Street, Edinburgh. James Clerk Maxwell ranks alongside Newton and Einstein as one of the world’s great physicists. At the conference, eminent speakers gathered to explore the legacy of Maxwell’s genius, which continues to impact on many scientific and theological aspects of modern society, from mobile phones and cybernetics to the discovery of the Higgs boson. The conference was introduced by David Forfar FRSE, Chairman of the James Clerk Maxwell Foundation, and sessions were chaired by RSE President, Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, and Dr James Rautio CEO, President and Founder of Sonnet Software. Speakers at the conference were: Professor Peter Higgs FRSE; Sir Peter Knight; Sir Michael Atiyah HonFRSE; Professor Malcolm Longair FRSE; Professor Carl Murray; Pictured in front of the statue during a Peter Reid; Professor Harald Haas; Professor Iain MacLeod; Professor Rodolphe break are (l–r) Professor Jim Al-Khalili, Sepulchre; and Professor Jim Al-Khalili. Dame Jocelyn and Professor Peter Higgs. Before the conference ended, a short extract of a BBC Scotland film about James The conference proved extremely Clerk Maxwell was shown; this programme was broadcast on BBC 2 Scotland on popular and all places were taken 3 December 2015. A programme on BBC Radio 4 was also broadcast on Tuesday up soon after they became available. 1 December on the Beauty of Equations, featuring Professor Jim Al-Khalili. Professor Malcolm Longair FRSE illustrates his talk (left) on The Impact of Maxwell’s Work on Colour and Statistical Physics. 2 resource WINTER 2015 The Science of Beauty Our travels through time: What is common to the experience of beauty derived from sensory sources such envisioning historical waves as music and visual art and highly cognitive ones such as mathematics, and from moral of technological innovation sources? What is the relationship between aesthetic judgement and aesthetic On the evening of Thursday 12 November, experience? And what is the grander biological significance of the experience of beauty? Professor Lynn Conway, Professor of These are the deep questions which were discussed at length by the many Electrical Engineering and Computer distinguished speakers, drawn from the fields of mathematics, physics, philosophy Science, Emerita, University of Michigan, and neuroscience at a two-day Conference which took place on Tuesday and was presented with the 2015 IEEE/RSE Wednesday 10 and 11 November at the RSE. James Clerk Maxwell Medal supported by Cirrus Logic. The Medal was Sessions were chaired by: Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell PRSE; Professor Andrew Ranicki FRSE; presented to Professor Conway Professor Semir Zeki; Professor Richard Morris FRSE; and Sir Michael Atiyah HonFRSE. (below) by RSE Vice-President for The stellar lineup of speakers comprised three Honorary RSE Fellows: Sir Michael Physical Sciences, Professor Sir David Atiyah; Sir David Attenborough; and Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf; as well as Wallace, “for contributions to and Professor Samir Zeki; Professor Beatrice de Gelder; Professor Gordon Graham; leadership in design methodology Dr Angela Breitenbach; Professor Winfried Menninghaus; Dr Tomohiro Ishizu; and pedagogy, enabling rapid advances Dr Cinzia Di Dio; Professor Michael Trimble; and Sir Roger Penrose. and dissemination of VLSI design tools and systems.” Dr Angela Breitenbach Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf Professor Beatrice de Geler Professor Conway then delivered her lecture, Our travels through time: envisioning historical waves of technological innovation, to a spellbound audience. Professor Sir Michael Atiyah Professor Andrew Ranicki Sir David Attenborough Professor Conway is pictured below after the lecture, in the RSE James Clerk Maxwell Room, with (l–r) Professor Martin Bastiaans, IEEE Region 8 Director; Professor Barry Shoop, IEEE President-Elect; and Professor Tariq Durrani, RSE Vice-President for International. Professor Gordon Graham Professor Semir Zeki Professor Winfried Menninghaus Photographs by Gerardo Jaconelli The events on Monday and Thursday of this week were live streamed and videos of most of the talks can now be viewed online at: www.royalsoced.org.uk/1186_November2015.html. Video recordings of some of the talks from the Science of Beauty conference have also been uploaded to the web site and summary reports of all these events will be be available soon. 3 resource WINTER 2015 Science and the Parliament Next year’s elections in Scotland and the future of science in Scottish business and education formed the heart of debate at the annual Science and the Parliament event on 11 November. In the setting of the Our Dynamic Earth science and exhibition centre, the event discussed research and higher education, the relationship between science and society and innovation and the economy, and heard from all the main political parties in Scotland. The event is hosted annually by the Royal Society of Chemistry, in partnership with the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Alan Alexander Andrew Morris Keynote speakers included: President of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Professor Dominic Tildesley; RSE Vice-President for Life Sciences, Professor Neva Haites; and Dr Alasdair Allan MSP, the Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland’s Language. MSPs from all of the opposition parties also spoke: Kezia Dugdale for Labour; Liz Smith for the Conservatives; Willie Rennie for the Liberal Democrats; and Patrick Harvie for the Greens. Professor Alan Alexander, RSE General Secretary, chaired the first session. Speakers in the session on Research & Higher Education included Professor Andrew Morris FRSE, Chief Scientific Officer (Health) Scotland, and Professor Julie Fitzpatrick FRSE, Moredun Research Institute Scientific Director and Group CEO. Julie Fitzpatrick Dominic Tildesley Neva Haites Alasdair Allan 4 resource WINTER 2015 The conference heard from two school students from Lossiemouth High School, Rhiannon Cleghorn and Rebecca Brown, who had recently completed a visit to Bokomoso School in Botswana to develop a global link between the schools. The link involved senior pupils from Lossiemouth delivering lessons to the pupils in Botswana. Rhiannon and Rebecca decided to use the resources from the Royal Society of Chemistry, ‘Water a global experiment’ to develop their lesson, which involved investigating Hydrogels. The presentation by the two students was one of the highlights of the day. The Royal Society of Chemistry, the Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of Biology annually award prizes to pupils from schools throughout Scotland for high achievement in Higher and Advanced Higher Chemistry, Physics and Biology. The Royal Society of Arts also awards a prize for technological studies. These awards were presented to the pupils by the Cabinet Secretary for Education & Lifelong Learning, Angela Constance MSP. Some of the award winners are pictured below. In addition, the 2015 RSE/BP Hutton Prize in Energy Innovation was presented to Dr Cairong Jiang of the School of Chemistry Rhiannon Cleghorn and Rebecca Brown (above) and meeting at the University of St Andrews. Willie Rennie and Liz Smith (below) Dr Jiang’s research into direct carbon Other sessions at the event were chaired fuel cells has led her to develop a by BBC Scotland’s Ken MacDonald and practical system of converting the Professor Stuart Monro FRSE. Speakers chemical energy of solid carbon into included: Professor Garry Taylor FRSE; electricity. The system could point the Jon Edwards; Professor Steve Yearley way to clean use of coal, waste and FRSE; Dr Stephen Breslin; Professor renewable carbon sources at high Bob Tooze FRSE; Professor Tim Bedford efficiency. The £10,000 Prize, funded FRSE; and Dr Siobhǻn Jordan. by the BP Trust, is awarded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh to an early-career Science and the Parliament has run researcher based in Scotland, who has annually since 2000 and attracts an shown a significant individual contribution audience across the scientific and to energy innovation through research engineering disciplines, MSPs and and knowledge exchange. other policy makers. Dr Jiang pictured with her daughter. 5 resource WINTER 2015 The RSE Comments BBC Charter Review In response to a consultation issued by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the RSE formed a Working Group, Chaired by Dr John McCormick, to formulate its position on the BBC Charter Review. The Advice Paper produced by the Working Group concluded that the current model of governance in place at the BBC is unsustainable and has failed to keep pace with the changing devolutionary settlement across the UK. A greater level of accountability to the people of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is needed. The Advice Paper noted the regret of the Working Group that the recommendations put forward by Professor Anthony King in his 2008 report are yet to be fully fulfilled.