What are Museums for in the 21st Century? (Discourse)
7.20-8.45pm, Friday 28 September, The Theatre
Director of the Victoria and Albert Museum and former MP, Dr Tristram Hunt, will discuss how museums can retain their relevance and purpose in our contemporary age. For an institution enmeshed in collections going back 5,000 years, the V&A is as focused on curating the future as preserving the past. Discourses are one of the Ri’s oldest and most prestigious series of talks.
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Gene Machine
7.00-8.30pm, Thursday 18 October, The Theatre
Everyone knows about DNA. It is the essence of our being, determining who we are and what we pass on to our children. The ribosome, on the other hand, doesn’t enjoy such wide understanding. Yet without it, nothing lives. It is the mother of all molecules. For if DNA is data then it can’t go anywhere, or do anything, without a machine to process it. The ribosome is that machine.
Nobel Prize winner Venki Ramakrishnan will tell the story of the race to uncover the structure of the ribosome, a fundamental discovery that resolves an ancient mystery of life itself and could lead to the development of better antibiotics to fight the most deadly diseases. He will chart his unlikely journey from his first fumbling experiments in a biology lab to being at the centre of a fierce competition at the cutting edge of modern science.
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