Abstract

Science is increasingly central to all our lives, be it nutrition, climate change or reproduction.  It is no longer possible, as it was in the past, to exile scientists to the ivory towers of their universities: rather science is engaging with a whole range of sectors, from which it was previously distant, for example: the media, education, women’s issues, the private sector and the political arena, are increasingly in need to engage with scientists.

In this lecture we shall explore some of the interfaces between these traditionally separate sectors, caused by the changing face of society, such as:

1. The impact of the screen culture on how children are thinking and learning and the impact, in turn, it will have on education,

2. the issue of recruiting more women into science,

3. as well as finding a means of evaluating, in an informed way, the potential and threats of the genetic technologies on reproduction, medication and lifestyle.

One of the problems for harnessing the technologies and minimizing the threats it poses to 21st Century society, is the heretofore discrepant agendas between politicians, scientists, and the media.  A journalist works over a timescale of hours, and wishes to increase readers and viewers; a politician wishes to stay in power for several years; whereas a scientist wishes to obtain money for research, and thinks in terms of a lifetime. 

These different agendas and timescales need to be reconciled in a neutral forum. The Royal Institution for 200 years has been ‘diffusing science for the common purposes of life’.  By offering a facility that is free from any private or public sector agenda, it is possible for the general public to come and talk, not only with each other, whatever their background, but also to engage with scientists, politicians, the media, and clinicians, so that they can evaluate together, in an informed way, how science and technology can be harnessed for the good of society.

Biography

Susan Adele Greenfield, Baroness Greenfield, is a British scientist, writer, broadcaster and member of the House of Lords. Greenfield is Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Lincoln College, Oxford University and Director of the Royal Institution. On 1 February 2006, she was elected Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh. She attended St Hilda's College, Oxford.

Greenfield's research focuses on brain physiology, particularly the etiology of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, but she is best known as a populariser of science. Greenfield has written several popular-science books about the brain and consciousness, and regularly gives public lectures and appears on radio and television. In 1994 she gave the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, then sponsored by the BBC, entitled "The Brain". From 1995 to 1999, she gave public lectures as Gresham Professor of Physics.

Greenfield created three research and biotechnology companies, Synaptica, BrainBoost and Neurodiagnostics, which research neuronal diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease.
As well as several honorary degrees Greenfield has been awarded the Royal Society's Faraday medal, in January 2000, for her contributions to the public understanding of science, and in 2003 the French Légion d'Honneur. In June 2001, she was made life peer, as Baroness Greenfield, of Otmoor in the County of Oxfordshire.