The last of the red leaves 🍂 📍 Kanazawa Castle Park, Ishikawa, Japan

From flaming raisins to robots and rockets, the institution’s Christmas Lectures have educated and entertained for two centuries go.nature.com/3Yeu8v3

Had the best day at the Nature and Science Museum in Tokyo today. A productive time researching Ayrton as well as getting sidetracked by everything else! 🐋 🦕 🌱 🚀

At Cambridge I worked with @whipplemuseum.bsky.social and @chuarchives.bsky.social to explore why Bacon’s cell ended up in space 🚀 from Grove’s letter we see that the basic principles were the same - tho the composition of the Bacon’s nickel membrane was kept under the official secrets act 🤫

Oxford, you’ve been an absolute treat! Thanks for having me @bodleian.ox.ac.uk - I’ll be back 👀 @stannescollege.bsky.social

📢 JOB ALERT 📢 Come work with me! @rigb.org is hiring an Archivist, full time, 2 year, fixed-term contract, hybrid working possible. Please share widely! More details 👇 www.rigb.org/about-us/wor...

I definitely recommend *chequing* out the finer details of this note if you have one! Lots of lovely little science details (even if the xmas lectures year turned out to be wrong…) And rumour has it the men in the front row of the audience are from the Bank of England 🤔

Nice little break from transcribing letters: found these doodles of Faraday @rigb.org and Herschel in a letter from novelist Maria Edgeworth (1802-1869) in 1844 @bodleian.ox.ac.uk, writing about Faraday’s Xmas lectures on electricity - pretty solid likenesses to be honest!

Not quite sure how I’ve been here nearly a week already?! @bodleian.ox.ac.uk’s Rad Cam looking lovely in the sun ☀️

To celebrate 200 years of Royal Institution Discourses, our friends at @rigb.org have released a newly-digitised version of a 1970 Discourse given by Kathleen Lonsdale FRS on 'Women in Science'. Listen to this fascinating lecture now: #WomenInSTEM www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzlA...

The wonderful @rigb.org Demo Team getting the recognition they deserve ✨ 🧪

We are so proud of our amazing Demo Team for being recognised as "global leaders in spectacular science demonstrations" with the 2025 @royalsociety.org Hauksbee Award. 👏 We can't wait to show you what they have in store for the 200th anniversary of the Christmas Lectures!

This is not only a serious issue for historians and not only a serious issue for academics (although it is that). It's a development that's also deleterious for the GLAM sector, for example, and part of a much larger trend nationally and internationally to restrict and dismantle access to archives.

@naomioreskes.bsky.social gave this *excellent* interview at @rigb.org back in May. A great primer on a lot of big problems in science - trust, disinformation, freedom - and why the onus is on scientists 🧪

Congrats to the two incoming Freer Fellows! 🥳

@naomioreskes.bsky.social's brilliant @rigb.org lecture: how military secrecy delayed plate tectonic theory for 3 decades - a narrative that remains ever relevant to science today... ⚒️ 🧪 #histsci #skystorians #science #academicsky #STS #geoscience @miguelohn.bsky.social

Toroid is love, Toroid is life. 🧪

Very exciting workshop in Reykjavik in October, organized by @oscarw.bsky.social. Please spread the word and/or consider submitting an abstract. #philsci #philsky #hps philevents.org/event/show/1...

Nothing quite like ordering up a mystery box of “glass slides” from the JJ Thomson collection at @trincolllibcam.bsky.social and finding this 🤩 Slides from Thomson’s 1921 discourse“chemical combination & the structure of the molecule” at @rigb.org in perfect condition 🧪 ⚛️ beats PowerPoint any day…

John Tyndall, Irish physicist, mountaineer & science popularizer, was born #OTD c. 1820. We've published 13 vols. of his letters thus far, 14 this fall & 15-21 in the works: bit.ly/4fluhVd @upittpress.bsky.social @rolandjackson.bsky.social @ri-science.bsky.social @royalsociety.org #HPS #histsci

The next Society for Philosophy of Science in Practice (SPSP) conference will be held at the University of Cambridge, U.K, on 15-18 July 2026. #philsci philosophy-science-practice.org

Our autumn programme of science talks is available for booking! 🍂 We'll reopen the newly refurbished Ri building with a spectacular calendar of talks, packed with popular speakers and fascinating topics. www.rigb.org/whats-on?typ...

We know we're not supposed to have favourites, but COME ON youtube.com/shorts/-l9nB...

Taylor also gets the award for best Xmas lecture intro song… 🧪 🎵

Shaimaa has a scholarship to do a PhD on Palestinian literature with me at @uoe-llc.bsky.social, but she's stuck in Gaza because the foreign office won't help. Please share. www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2...

I had so much fun at The Royal Society’s Summer Exhibition a few weeks ago! The quantum tech room was especially cool. Is the historian-equivalent of touching grass *actually talking* to living scientists? Maybe. Obviously stopped by Faraday’s colloids that @ri-science.bsky.social loaned too… 🧪

Weighing in at 827 pages and 2 1/4 inches, our Oxford Handbook of American and British Women Philosophers in the 19th Century is HERE! Huge thanks to @oupphilosophy.bsky.social and our 50+ authors. Restoring women to the philosophical canon is a matter of justice, but it is also better scholarship!

Conference highlight: VIP at 8G #BSHS2025 #histci

Always fun to get the chance to talk about weird physics! Now to relax and enjoy the rest of #BSHS2025 from the audience… #HPS #histsci 🧪

For a deep dive into this fascinating story, take a look at this blog written by historian @katysduncan.bsky.social 👇 www.rigb.org/explore-scie...

✨ Physics & Glass ✨ Now on at the Whipple Museum, Physics & Glass is a tribute to the art of the scientific glassblower. Glass has been one of the most important materials in the history of physics, and this display highlights some of the most intricate pieces in the Whipple’s collection.

The only possible way to round off the @ri-science.bsky.social Geophysics conference was to stick the attendees in Faraday’s lab 🤷🏻‍♀️ Thank you all so much for coming! @miguelohn.bsky.social @alisabokulich.bsky.social

A wonderful talk tonight by @naomioreskes.bsky.social at the @ri-science.bsky.social on how Navy secrecy of oceanographic data impeded rise of plate tectonics.

the Socials Manager *definitely* has a supercut of me saying “Brobdingnagian” wrong 87 times 🥲 I will never know peace again

Rethinking the Origins of Plate Tectonics - #historyofscience lecture Mon May 12 @ri-science.bsky.social. @naomioreskes.bsky.social on how military secrecy stalled our understanding of the earth for decades. @katysduncan.bsky.social @miguelohn.bsky.social blog.history.ac.uk/2025/05/hist...

On Monday, the Royal Institution is hosting a workshop on the #histsci of geophysics, with a livestreamed keynote by @naomioreskes.bsky.social on plate tectonics. Read @katysduncan.bsky.social on how she and @miguelohn.bsky.social put the event together, and see who's presenting here:

Super piece by the IHR ahead of Naomi Oreskes’ keynote on Monday - not too late to grab your in person or virtual ticket! 🎟️ www.rigb.org/whats-on/ret...

Think you know the history of plate tectonics? Think again 🌍 @naomioreskes.bsky.social explores why the US military shrouded this science in secrecy & what this reveals about scientific progress, politics and power… 📅 7pm 12th May @ri-science.bsky.social 🎟️ Tickets www.rigb.org/whats-on/ret...

What are your fondest memories of the Christmas Lectures or Discourses lecture series? Click on the link below to share yours 👇 www.rigb.org/explore-scie...

When I’m not thinking about Christmas Lectures or Discourses I’m busy looking into Faraday’s *other* 1825 legacy: isolating benzene. @ri-science.bsky.social has (rightly) been obsessed obsessed ever since. Check out the Benzene Century menu & choose your poison - I’ll take Lavoisier’s sacrifice…

Did you know you can watch over 100 individual Christmas Lectures, completely free? Explore our video archive going all the way back to the 1960s ⬇️ www.rigb.org/christmas-le...

Maslow’s hierarchy (AFM version)

Newly found Ada Lovelace letters in the Royal Society collections connect her to climate and plant science and highlight the importance of women in Victorian scientific networks: royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... #NotesandRecords #HistSci #HistSTM

When a casual after-work science chat with your mates turns into the world’s longest and most prestigious science lecture series 🤷🏻‍♀️ #JustFaradayThings #histsci #science

Trying to figure out how to defend science in present moment? We did this podcast a few months ago, but it is just out, and more relevant than ever. podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

What are the @ri-science.bsky.social christmas lectures? And how have they changed over the last two centuries? 🤔 big questions to cover in a small blog, but it hopefully gives a flavour of the many (many) archival angles one can take when researching these lectures! 📚👇 www.rigb.org/explore-scie...

Great news: we're making Michael Faraday's notebooks available online ✍️ These writings are little known to the public, and shed light on the great natural philosopher's mind. www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

The secret's out! 🚀 The 2025 Christmas Lectures, supported by CGI, will be presented by Dr Dame Maggie Aderin-Pocock, and will be about outer space and all the scientific wonders beyond planet Earth. We can't wait until December! Find out more: rigb.org/christmas-lectures

Better late than never, here’s our International Women’s Day salute to the greats of the BJPS. Starting with the OG, Mary Hesse (BJPS Editor 1965-69) and all-round good ‘un. So good, in fact, she got her own special issue. Read more about her work here: www.journals.uchicago.edu/journals/bjp...

It's our birthday! 🎂 The Royal Institution was founded on this day in 1799 for "the teaching by courses of Philosophical Lectures and Experiments, the application of Science to the Common Purposes of Life". In this 1985 video, George Porter shows us Faraday's lab, which you can still visit today