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Talks given to the Society since April 1997

Although this file is called meetings-since-2000.shtml some earlier online notices have come to light so have been added.
Date Speaker(s) Title
10 Oct 1994 Dr Steven Miller The Great Comet Crash 1994
6 Feb 1995 Mr David A Williams The Future of the Cellular Telephone
5 Feb 1996 Ian Darwin Edwards Indigenous People and Plant Use: Learning from Traditional Societies
4 Mar 1996 Peter M Dryburgh Whisky and Scotland: some reflections on its past and present
29 Mar 1996 Prof Heinz Wolff Photography: A Crucial Technology for the 20th Century
7 Oct 1996 Prof Malcolm Longair The Hubble Space Telescope and the Evolution of Galaxies
11 Nov 1996 John Mallard Magnetic Resonance Imaging - The Revolution in Medical Diagnostics
9 Dec 1996 Dr Stuart Monro The Dynamic Earth Project
20 Jan 1997 Dr S Vass Chemical Risk Assessment
17 Feb 1997 Thomas Gillespie Longannet - Coal Extraction and Supply
21 Mar 1997 Prof Joseph Rotblat, FRS Science and Humanity in the Nuclear Age
21 Apr 1997 Mr Tom Leatherland Improving Environmental Quality in the Forth Catchment
3 Nov 1997 Dr Gary Tonge The Digital Television Revolution
24 Nov 1997 Captain James Taylor The Northern Lighthouse Board: Keeping the Tradition and Building for the Future
15 Dec 1997 Dr Alastair Masson The Emergence of the Professional Anaesthetist
12 Jan 1998 Dr Anita Quye From Classic Cars to Dolls' Disease: What's in Store for Collectable Plastics?
16 Feb 1998 Dr Phil Richards Falklands Oil: How, When, and at What Cost to the Community?
16 Mar 1998 Dr Margaret Joachim Navigating the Millennium Minefield: A Survival Guide for Industry, Commerce and Government
3 Apr 1998 Dr Jonathan Miller CBE MB BCh FRCP FRCPE From the Look of It: The Science and Art of Visual Communication
27 Apr 1998 Mr Graham Rule Practical Demonstration of the Internet
19 Oct 1998 Prof Stephen Salter Land-Mines and the Dervish Mine-Detonating Vehicle
16 Nov 1998 Prof Robert Harwood Global Warming and Scotland's Weather for the Next Millennium
14 Dec 1998 Prof Patrick Bailey Fireworks, Stink Bombs and Magic Bullet Medicines: The Chemist as a Molecular Engineer
18 Jan 1999 Prof Charles McKean 'The New Acropolis': The architecture of the Museum of Scotland as the standard of things to come
15 Feb 1999 Dr Duncan Hine The Post Office: a hybrid enterprise for the next millennium
15 Mar 1999 Alan McKirdy Quarrying: A threat to the Landscape?
2 Apr 1999 Prof Hugh Pennington RSSA Opening Lecture for the Science Festival
26 Apr 1999 Derek Fordyce High Technology Road Surfaces: The Engineering of 21st Century Streetscapes
15 Nov 1999 Dr Ulrich Loening GM Crops : Facts, Fallacies and Fantasies
13 Dec 1999 John Lovell Earthquakes: A review, with particular emphasis on Scotland's Role in Seismology
17 Jan 2000 Barry Hutton Transport Policies for Edinburgh: Options and Implications
7 Feb 2000 Alan Mackie Railway Signalling and its Role in the Safety of Trains
21 Feb 2000 Andrew McMillan Building Stones of Edinburgh
13 Mar 2000 Dr Helene Irvine The Epidemic Spread of Cellphone Technology: The Precautionary Approach as a Modern Public Health Intervention
7 Apr 2000 Dr Monica Grady Are We Alone? The Search for Life beyond the Earth
22 Nov 2000 Dr Mark Casali The UK Astronomy Technology Centre
27 Nov 2000 Anthony Sale Hon FBCS ULTRA SECRET Enigma and Colossus: World War II Code Breaking and the Birth of the Electronic Computer
11 Dec 2000 John Crompton A Crisis for the Future of Scotland's Industrial Museums?
15 Jan 2001 Dr Murray Campbell Adventures with an Artificial Mouth:
12 Feb 2001 Robin Harper MSP WASTE
5 Mar 2001 Dr Charles Swainson 21st Century Health Care: Rebuilding The Royal Infirmary
6 Apr 2001 Prof Heinz Wolff A Little Knowledge is a Good Thing, a Little Judgement is Even Better
8 Oct 2001 Shelley Jofre Finger of Suspicion: Fingerprint Forensic Evidence under the Microscope
5 Nov 2001 Nigel Griffiths MP Global Warming: The Evidence, and An Appropriate Response
3 Dec 2001 Prof Gordon McVie Genes and Cancer: Hope or Hype?
21 Jan 2002 Prof James W. Ironside Mad Cows, Prions and Humans: The BSE Dilemma
11 Feb 2002 Prof George Fleming Floods - Past and Present Issues
11 Mar 2002 Jim Wyllie Global disorder and regime stability post 11th September 2001
5 Apr 2002 Prof John Burland Propping Up Pisa
13 May 2002 Dr Ian Donnachie Biography As History - Deconstructing Robert Owen, Social Reformer
14 Oct 2002 David Bruce Hill and Adamson: where photography began
11 Nov 2002 Tam Dalyell MP Iraq and the Implications of 21st Century Warfare
16 Dec 2002 Prof Robin Churchill The Law Offshore
20 Jan 2003 Dr Jane Wilford Asbestosis
17 Feb 2003 Prof Alasdair D. McIntyre The Future of Sea Fisheries
10 Mar 2003 Prof John Twidell Wind Power Technology and Ecology - the long view
11 Apr 2003 Prof Vicki Bruce Face and Identity
19 May 2003 Dr Duncan Steel Project Spaceguard: Saving Mankind from Going the Way of the Dinosaurs
20 Oct 2003 Dr Allen Simpson The Art and Science of Measurement: Revealing the Units of Scotland's Early Trade
24 Nov 2003 Prof Aubrey Manning OBE FRSE The Time Line: a Biologist Contemplates Human History
8 Dec 2003 Dr Chris Kalman Depleted Uranium: Assessing the Toxic Effect of the West's Battlefield Munitions
19 Jan 2004 Dr Alison Morrison-Low The Soldier-Astronomer: Thomas Makdougall Brisbane's scientific work
23 Feb 2004 Dr Stuart Monro Dynamic Earth: a resource for the future
3 Apr 2004 Prof Steven Rose The Decade of the Mind
3 May 2004 Prof Sir Nicholas Shackleton FRS The Geological Time Scale in Relation to Rapid Climatic Change
24 May 2004 Dr Alison Blackwell Surviving the Scottish Biting Midge
18 Oct 2004 Dr Stuart Monro Science in Schools, the role of Earth Science
22 Nov 2004 Prof Anthony Busuttil Helping the Police with their Enquiries - Has Crime Investigation Improved? - The Medical View
6 Dec 2004 Dr James Stubbs Diet, phenotypes and obesity
17 Jan 2005 Dr Donald Bruce The Ethics of Stem Cell Research
21 Feb 2005 Prof John Zarnecki Huygens - A first look at Titan
21 Mar 2005 Dr Ewan Hyslop Decay and Repair of Sandstone in the Edinburgh World Heritage Site: The need for improved decision-making in the selection of stone
25 Apr 2005 Syd House Conifers and Conservation - Transforming Scotland's Conifer Plantations into Diverse Forests
16 May 2005 Dr Roger Musson Monitoring Earthquakes in the UK
12 Oct 2005 Prof Wilson Sibbett Lasers, Light and Life
17 Nov 2005 Dr Dave Tappin Tsunamis - the catastrophic event
5 Dec 2005 Prof Jim Fraser New solutions to old cases - advances in the forensic sciences
23 Jan 2006 Dr Alan MacDonald. African groundwater: the saviour of a continent?
6 Feb 2006 Prof Sebastian Lucas HIV/AIDS - Problem Solved?
6 Mar 2006 Dr Ernest McAlpine Armstrong Tobacco, Alcohol and Scotland's Health
3 Apr 2006 Barry Colford The Forth Road Bridge
1 May 2006 Mr J A R Smith Watching the 'tele' may improve your health - advances in telemedicine
19 Jun 2006 Prof Ian Robson Supermassive Black Holes: the engines of Active Galaxies
16 Oct 2006 Prof Hugh Pennington Avian Flu: Are We All Doomed?
20 Nov 2006 Dr George Hunter Fast Breeder Reactors and the Environment
4 Dec 2006 Prof James Barbour The Cost of Ill-Health
15 Jan 2007 Prof Nick Hastie Genetics - The New Fortune Telling?
19 Feb 2007 Prof Cairns Aitken Digital Photography - Pleasures and Pains of a New Art
19 Mar 2007 Prof David Webb Getting Value for Money from New Medicines
30 Apr 2007 Prof Aubrey Manning Population Control: Policies which dare not speak their name
4 Jun 2007 Dr Allen Simpson Sir David Brewster and the Early Days of the RSSA
15 Oct 2007 Brigadier Ian Gardiner Some Realities of War
19 Nov 2007 Prof Arnold Maran The Singing Voice [Cancelled]
3 Dec 2007 Prof Charles McKean Railways Wars and unnecessary bridge construction
14 Jan 2008 Dr Frank Prior How to be a Medical Inventor
4 Feb 2008 Prof Eric Salzen The Faces of Emotion: The What? and the Why?
24 Mar 2008 Dr Alison Sheridan New insights into Neolithic, Chalcolithic and Bronze Age Scotland
21 Apr 2008 Prof Stephen Salter Reversing Global Warming by Increasing Cloud Albedo
5 May 2008 Dr John Davies Runaway Rockets and other space exploration disasters
14 Jul 2008 Prof Stuart Monro A Himalayan Adventure and a bit of Iceland!
13 Oct 2008 Louise Dalziel New Media Opportunities
10 Nov 2008 Prof David Purdie Human Evolution and Modern Medicine
8 Dec 2008 Prof Arnold Maran The Three Mafias
26 Jan 2009 Roger Lockwood The Northern Lighthouse Board - Today and Tomorrow
23 Feb 2009 Dr Jim Wilson The Genetic History of the British Isles
23 Mar 2009 Prof Adam Zeman A Portrait of the Brain
27 Apr 2009 Prof Howard Liddell An Introduction to Eco-minimalism
11 May 2009 Surgeon Commander John Sharpley RN Military Operational Stress and Leadership Aspects of Stress Control
22 Jun 2009 Prof Ian Robson Major Technological Advances in Astronomy since Galileo
19 Oct 2009 Prof David Atkinson Are GM Crops the Solution to our Current Food Security Problems?
9 Nov 2009 Peter Jamieson The Evolution of Modern Wind Technology
14 Dec 2009 Dr Richard Luxmoore Climate change in Scotland's seas
18 Jan 2010 Prof Alistair Lawrence Animal Welfare: Modern Insights on an Old Issue
15 Feb 2010 Dr Ian D Hudson The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority: A strange case of not only doing 'what it says on the tin'?
22 Mar 2010 Rear Admiral Martin Alabaster The Impact of Emerging Technologies on Naval Operations
24 May 2010 Tristan Smith Disasters at sea: what have we learnt since the Titanic, and what we may have forgotten
5 Jul 2010 Dr Richard Philip The Life of a Tropical Vet
11 Oct 2010 Dr Fraser Hunter New light on Roman Scotland
8 Nov 2010 Prof Jon Oberlander Talking with Robots
24 Jan 2011 Prof Tom MacDonald The art of drug safety
14 Feb 2011 Dr Alison Morrison-Low The Royal Scottish Society of Arts and Scottish Lighthouses in the Nineteenth Century
28 Mar 2011 Dr Alan Gadian Climate Change and Geoengineering
9 May 2011 Prof Anne Glover Should the Public Pay for Basic Research?
6 Jun 2011 Brigadier Ian Gardiner Bombers, Balloons, and Brave Men - a flight back to the dawn of military aviation
10 Oct 2011 Prof Iain Docherty A Streetcar Named Desire? What the Edinburgh Trams fiasco teaches us about our attitudes to transport and the cities we live in
21 Nov 2011 Alan Walker Googling the Higgs Boson
5 Dec 2011 Prof John Brown Science and Subjectivity
16 Jan 2012 Dr Jim Tate Heritage Science: Putting the X in Museums
13 Feb 2012 Dr Jonathan Delafield-Butt Infant Consciousness and the Importance of Infant Mental Health
12 Mar 2012 Dr Diarmad Campbell Glasgow in 3-D; dividends from our coal mining legacy
23 Apr 2012 Dr Judy Evans A Plastic Life
25 Jun 2012 Prof James Floyd The Heraldry of Science
15 Oct 2012 Prof Charles Cockell The Search for Life Beyond the Earth
12 Nov 2012 Prof Bob Reuben BSc PhD CEng FIM FIMechE FHEA Engineering across the micro-nano gap
10 Dec 2012 Prof Andrew Mearns Spragg FRSA FSB New pharmaceutical lead compounds from marine natural products - an under exploited source of chemical diversity
21 Jan 2013 Prof James S Dunlop BSc Hons PhD FInstP FRSE The First Galaxies
18 Feb 2013 Prof Richard J Cogdell FRS FRSE FRSA FSB What can we learn from photosynthesis about how to use solar energy to make fuels
25 Mar 2013 Mr Martin McAdam BE CEng FIEI FRSA Wave Energy
22 Apr 2013 Dr Nick Fraser Sea Dragons, Dinosaurs and the Origin of the Modern World
20 May 2013 Prof Ian Robson Supercool Astronomy and the beaches of Hawaii
24 Jun 2013 Dr Beverly Bergman Scottish Pioneers of Military Medicine
7 Oct 2013 Prof Robin Sellar MB BS BSc DMRD FRCR FRCP FRCS The brain: attacked from within
11 Nov 2013 Prof Murray Campbell FRSE Rebecs and racketts, sackbuts and serpents: the fascinating world of early musical instruments
2 Dec 2013 Prof Tom Stevenson Microelectronics - key to our modern life style
20 Jan 2014 Prof Gillian Wright MBE The James Webb Space Telescope Mission
10 Feb 2014 Prof Stephen Blackmore CBE FLS FRGS FiBiol FRSE Gardening the Earth: Prospects for a Small Planet
10 Mar 2014 Prof James Hough FRS FRSE FRSA The Search for Gravitational Waves
12 May 2014 Dr Victoria Martin After the Higgs boson: what's next for the Large Hadron Collider?
16 Jun 2014 Dr Jane Ridder-Patrick Scottish Contributions to the Scientific Revolution
29 Sep 2014 Dr Stig A Walsh Evolution of the bird brain in a (empty) nutshell
27 Oct 2014 Prof José Torero Cullen FRSE FREng What drives Technology and Innovation into Safety — Science, Regulation or Public Perception?
24 Nov 2014 Prof Stuart Monro OBE DUniv FRSE Scotland's Time Lords
26 Jan 2015 Prof Sue Black OBE BSc PhD DSc FRSE FRAI FRCPE HFRCPSG Forensic anthropology — the art of speaking for the dead
23 Feb 2015 Prof Alistair Borthwick PhD DSc CEng FICE Tides and tidal power from a Scottish historical perspective
30 Mar 2015 Prof Jon Gibbins Capping Carbon - Why and How?
27 Apr 2015 Mark Rouse BEng(Hons) and James Gunn BSc(Hons) CChem MRSC Dounreay: Past and Present
25 May 2015 No lecture given Annual General Meeting
28 Sep 2015 Dr John K Davies
New Horizons in the Solar System
26 Oct 2015 Dr Andy Kerr The Future of Energy
30 Nov 2015 Prof Mark Woolhouse OBE FRSE FMedSci Antibiotic resistant infections: is this the next plague?
25 Jan 2016 Prof Susan Roaf BAHons AADipl PhD ARB FRIAS FRSA FRSS WCCA Powering 21st Century Buildings: All Change
29 Feb 2016 Prof J Murray Roberts Scotland's cold-water coral reefs and their future in a changing ocean
28 Mar 2016 Prof Andy Lawrence Is Astronomy Useless?
25 Apr 2016 Dr Charlotte Vye-Brown Volcanic Hazards
6 Jun 2016 No lecture given Annual General Meeting
26 Sep 2016 Prof Richard Kenway OBE FRSE FInstP FLSW The Big Data Revolution
31 Oct 2016 Prof Colin R Pulham The Big Squeeze - Putting Materials Under Pressure
28 Nov 2016 Prof Miles Padgett Quantum Inspired Imaging with Single-Pixels
30 Jan 2017 Prof Julie Fitzpatrick OBE Livestock Matters for Global Food Security
27 Feb 2017 Dr Hermione Cockburn Dynamic Earth, James Hutton and Scotland's Inspirational Landscape
27 Mar 2017 Prof R P Tooze FRSC FRSE What can Shaw, Wilde, Churchill, Bush and Pasteur teach us about innovation?
24 Apr 2017 Prof Martin A Hendry MBE FRSE FInstP FRAS Listening to Einstein's Universe: the hunt for gravitational waves
5 Jun 2017 Dr Alison Morrison-Low The Origins of the Stereoscope
25 Sep 2017 Capt I S Groom MBE RN CEng FIMarEST and
Mr Gavin Ireland
Constructing the Nation's Aircraft Carriers
30 Oct 2017 Dr Chris Evans BSc PhD The European Extremely Large Telescope
27 Nov 2017 Dr Declan A Diver Fusion: power for the future
29 Jan 2018 Prof Dame Anna F Dominiczak DBE MD FRCP FAHA FRSE FMedSci Precision Medicine in Glasgow, Scotland and World Wide
26 Feb 2018 Dr Jason King BSc PhD MBA The Power and Potential of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells
26 Mar 2018 Prof Duncan P Hand BSc PhD Applications of high power lasers in manufacturing and medicine
30 Apr 2018 Prof David J Argyle BVMS PhD DECVIM-CA (Oncology) MRCVS Managing Global Challenges on a One Health Platform
4 Jun 2018 Stuart Brown BEng DMS MSc The University of Edinburgh – A Zero Carbon University by 2040?
17 Sep 2018 Prof John Underhill BSc PhD FGS FRSE Between a rock and a hard place: the critical role that Early Cenozoic events had in shaping the UK geology, shale gas reserves and carbon storage sites
29 Oct 2018 Prof Bob Reuben How are you feeling? Detecting Disease using a robotic sense of touch
26 Nov 2018 Dr Peter Barlow BSc(Hons) PhD FHEA FRSB A Pep Talk: Curing the Common Cold
28 Jan 2019 Prof Ken Rice PhD FRAS Finding planets around other stars
25 Feb 2019 Hon Adam Bruce A fourth Industrial Revolution – the transition to an electric society
25 Mar 2019 Commodore Mike Bullock MBE MA More than Lighthouses
29 Apr 2019 Prof Tim Aitman MB ChB FRCP FMedSci FRSB FRSE The human genome – its scientific and societal impact
3 Jun 2019 Dr Sam Alberti Science & Technology at National Museums Scotland: Past, Present and Future
30 Sep 2019 Prof George Barakos Dip.Eng. MASc PhD FRAeS A New Beginning in Aerospace
28 Oct 2019 Prof Jason Love FRSC Mining the Scrapheap
25 Nov 2019 Dr Cat Hobaiter Gestural Origins: Exploring the evolutionary origins of human language through great ape gesture
27 Jan 2020 Prof David Manlove MA PhD FHEA Designing algorithms for matching markets in healthcare
24 Feb 2020 Simon Milne MBE Around the Botanics in 350 Years
29 Jun 2020 Prof J D Floyd CGeol FGS The Science and History of Amber
28 Sep 2020 Prof Wilson Poon FRSE FInstP The Physics of COVID-19 transmission and disinfection: what we don't know!
26 Oct 2020 Prof David Harrison MD DSc FRCPath FRCPEd FRCSEd Interpreting the art of Pathology with AI
23 Nov 2020 Prof Catherine Heymans FRSE The dark side of the Universe
25 Jan 2021 Dr Alasdair William Clark Whisky Tasting using a Nanoscale Optical Tongue
22 Feb 2021 Craig Clark MBE FREng FRAeS Mission: Scotland in Space
29 Mar 2021 Prof Keith Bell FRSE Powering past fossil fuels: electricity and net-zero
26 Apr 2021 Prof Siddharthan Chandran FRSE What are the prospects for regenerative neurology?
07 Jun 2021 Prof Ian Robson BSc PhD FRAS FinstP CPhys The Pluto story: demise of a planet!
27 Sep 2021 Dr Brad Harper MD Sherlock Holmes as Science Fiction
25 Oct 2021 Prof Lorna Dawson CBE BSc PhD FRSE FRSA F.I.Soil.Sci. ChSci Natural Justice and a sense of place: how soil can be used as intelligence and evidence
29 Nov 2021 Prof Ian Robson BSc PhD FRAS CPhys FInstP The Changing Scene in Astronomy
31 Jan 2022 Prof J Murray Roberts FRSB Cold-water corals in a changing ocean
28 Feb 2022 Prof Wilson Poon FRSE FInstP Goo Galore: the science, the technology and the fun of all things squidgy
28 Mar 2022 Prof Colin Pulham Cool Crystals – From Hand-warmers to Heating Homes and Tackling Fuel Poverty
25 Apr 2022 Prof Steve Brusatte The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs… Including Scottish Dinosaurs!
06 Jun 2022 Dr Carol Marsh OBE CEng FIET The Future of Electronics
26 Sep 2022 Air Vice-Marshall Ross Paterson CB OBE ADC DL The Royal Air Force in 2022 and beyond; at the Leading Edge
31 Oct 2022 Dr Georgia Perona-Wright Immune Cells as Trained Defences: the Biology of Vaccine Design
28 Nov 2022 Dr Stefan N Symeonides MB BChir PhD(Cantab) MRCP(UK)(Med Onc) FRCPE Developments in the Field of Cancer Immunotherapy
30 Jan 2023 Dr XinRan Liu FRAS Searching In The Dark
27 Feb 2023 Prof Pete Smith FRS FRSE FNA FEurASc FI Soil Sci FRSB Looking After Our Soils So That They Can Look After Us
27 Mar 2023 Dr Sarah Lynagh The Big Data Revolution - the journey from discovery of DNA structure to the sequencing of the human genome and beyond
24 Apr 2023 Will Whitehorn FRAeS FCILT FMS The UK and Scotland’s participation in the global space industry as we undergo an industrial revolution in space
05 Jun 2023 Dr Patrick Hickey Through the looking glass: Imaging cells, silicon and space
25 Sep 2023 Prof Declan Diver Fusion Power: a practical energy source
30 Oct 2023 Prof Timothy D. Drysdale SFHEA Remote laboratories: Tolkienian adventures in digital education
27 Nov 2023 Prof Paul Digard The past, present and possible future of bird flu
18 Dec 2023 Dr Rene Steijl Quantum Computing and its Application in Engineering Simulations
29 Jan 2024 Prof Zoe Shipton OBE FRSE and Dr Mark Stillings A series of fortuitous events: Capture of carbon dioxide by milling of silicate minerals
26 Feb 2024 Prof Colin Snodgrass FRAS Avoiding Killer Asteroids
25 Mar 2024 Prof Barbara Webb FRSE Inside the brain of a bee
29 Apr 2024 Prof Rodger Duffin BSc PhD MRCPath FRSB The Effect of Nanoparticles on Workers and Health
03 Jun 2024 Mr Stuart Brown From fixed to floating — de-risking the hard engineering that will electrify the UK

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