08 July2022
Cambridge University Library will be holding an exhibition of Charles Darwin’s letters from 9 July – 4 December 2022. Cambridge Philosophical Society has a long relationship with the Darwin family, which goes back to the very early days of Charles Darwin's career and that of the Society.
07 July2022
Event
Our popular summer visit resumed this year, after a two year break due to the Covid-19 pandemic with a visit to the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) on Bletchley Park.
04 July2022
Once again Biological Reviews is number 1 in the Impact Factor rankings.
16 May2022
YouTube
Dr Emily Mitchell from the Department of Zoology, along with Professor Simon Conway Morris and Dr Alex Liu, both from the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Cambridge discuss their research into the Ediacaran and Cambrian periods and the techniques used to collect fossil data in the field.
04 April2022
Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry Dr Richard Henderson gives our Honorary Fellows Lecture: Using electron microscopy to understand the molecules of life.
23 March2022
Our last lecture during Lent term and before the new series in Michaelmas Term is our G I TAYLOR LECTURE ‘Life in moving fluids’ from Professor Eric Lauga. The lecture will be held 28 March 2022, 18:30 – 19:30 in the Babbage Lecture Theatre, New Museums Site - University of Cambridge.
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The fundamental laws of physics look different when reflected in a mirror. This is the statement that the laws of physics have a handedness, what physicists call chirality. This is one of the most important facts that we know about the universe, a fact that, remarkably, goes a long way to fixing the mathematical structure of the laws of nature. I will explain how we know about this handedness, why it’s so important, and why there are still several chiral mysteries that remain unsolved.
Dementia is a topic of considerable public interest. How empirical evidence has contributed to this societal awareness and indeed fear will be covered in this talk. It will span research from the 1980s when not much was understood about dementia up to contemporary perspectives. The focus will be on the epidemiological and public health evidence base, and how this relates to the results published from clinical and lab based research. The findings from UK and other high income countries of reduced age specific prevalence (%) will be explored, and the implications of results from brain based studies that dementia is not inevitable in the presence of ‘alzheimer’ type changes. The role of inequalities, risk varying across countries and time and our knowledge about protective factors have strengthened during recent years, and the balance of high risk with whole population approaches to reducing risk for society will be considered.
From Darwin’s paper on evolution to the development of stem cell research, publications from the Society continue to shape the scientific landscape.
Mathematical Proceedings is one of the few high-quality journals publishing original research papers that cover the whole range of pure and applied mathematics, theoretical physics and statistics.
Biological Reviews covers the entire range of the biological sciences, presenting several review articles per issue. Although scholarly and with extensive bibliographies, the articles are aimed at non-specialist biologists as well as researchers in the field.
The Spirit of Inquiry celebrates the 200th anniversary of the remarkable Cambridge Philosophical Society and brings to life the many remarkable episodes and illustrious figures associated with the Society, including Adam Sedgwick, Mary Somerville, Charles Darwin, and Lawrence Bragg.
Become a Fellow of the Society and enjoy the benefits that membership brings. Membership costs £20 per year.
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Please contact philosoc@group.cam.ac.uk to agree a timing before visiting the office.