Professor Sean Carroll of the California Institute of Technology will deliver this year’s Gifford Lectures over five nights between 19 and 27 October. The overall theme is:

The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning and the Universe Itself

Individual lectures will cover:

  • Cosmos, Time, Memory
  • The Stuff of Which We Are Made
  • Layers of Reality
  • Simplicity, Complexity, Thought
  • Our Place in the Universe

Download abstracts for all five lectures from the University event page.

Visit Eventbrite for full details and to book your free ticket, which will cover entry to all five lectures.

Professor Sean Carroll

Professor Carroll researches theoretical aspects of cosmology, field theory, gravitation, and quantum mechanics by studying the structure and evolution of the universe. His particular concerns are inflation, the arrow of time, and how quantum mechanics intersects with cosmology. He’s done work on dark matter and dark energy, modified gravity, topological defects, extra dimensions, and violations of fundamental symmetries. His books include From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time, and The Particle at the End of the Universe: How the Hunt for the Higgs Boson Leads Us to the Edge of a New World.

Long-running lecture series

The prestigious Gifford Lectureships were established by Adam Lord Gifford (1820–1887) in a bequest to the universities of Edinburgh, Glasgow, St. Andrews and Aberdeen. Their aim: to sponsor lectures to “promote and diffuse the study of Natural Theology in the widest sense of the term - in other words, the knowledge of God”.

The prestige of the Gifford series derives in part from the world-renowned lecturers and from the diversity of intellectual disciplines they represent. In presenting the 2016 lectures, Carroll follows many great thinkers including Alfred North Whitehead, Hannah Arendt, Noam Chomsky, Vilayanur Ramachandran, William James, Jean-Luc Marion, Iris Murdoch, Roger Scruton, Charles Taylor, Carl Sagan, and Rowan Williams.

Image of the Gifford Lectures website

First published: 11 October 2016

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