Romanes Lecture

The lecture series was founded by, and named after, the biologist George Romanes , and has been running since 1892 . Over the years, many notable figures from the Arts and Sciences have been invited to speak. The lecture can be on any subject in science, art or literature, approved by the Vice-Chancellor of the University .

LIST OF ROMANES LECTURERS AND LECTURE SUBJECTS

1890s

1893 Thomas Henry Huxley — [http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/2940 ''Evolution and Ethics''] (See also [http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/comm/OxfMag/Romanes93.html a contemporary review of Huxley's lecture])

1894 August Weismann — ''The Effect of External Influences upon Development''

1895 Holman Hunt — ''The Obligations of the Universities towards Art''

1896 Mandell Creighton — ''The English National Character''

1897 John Morley — ''Machiavelli''

1898 Archibald Geikie — ''Types of Scenery and their Influence on Literature''

1899 Richard Claverhouse Jebb — ''Humanism in education''

1900s

1900 James Murray — ''The Evolution of English Lexicography'' (Also available at The Oxford English Dictonary site .)

1901 Lord Acton (Never delivered, due to Acton's illness)

1902 James Bryce — ''The Relations of the Advanced and the Backward Races of Mankind''

1903 Oliver Lodge — ''Modern views on matter''

1904 Courtenay Ilbert — ''Montesquieu''

1905 Ray Lankester — ''Nature and Man''

1906 William Paton Ker — ''Sturla the Historian''

1907 Lord Curzon — ''Frontiers'' ( part 1 part 2 part 3 part 4 part 5 )

1908 Henry Scott Holland — ''The optimism of Butler's Analogy''

1909 Arthur Balfour — ''Questionings on Criticism and Beauty''

1910s

1910 Theodore Roosevelt — ''Biological Analogies in History'' (Available in the collection ''African and European Addresses'' .)

1911 J.B. Bury — ''Romances of chivalry on Greek soil''

1912 Henry Montagu Butler — ''Lord Chatham as an orator''

1913 William Mitchell Ramsay — ''The imperial peace: an ideal in European history''

1914 J. J. Thomson – ''The atomic theory''

1915 E. B. Poulton – ''Science and the Great War''

1916

1917

1918 Herbert Henry Asquith — ''Some Aspects of the Victorian Age''

1919

1920s

1920 William Ralph Inge — ''The Idea of Progress''

1921 Joseph Bédier — ''Roland à Roncevaux''

1922 Arthur Stanley Eddington — ''The theory of relativity and its influence on scientific thought''

1923 John Burnet — ''Ignorance''

1924 John Masefield — ''Shakespeare & spiritual life''

1925 William Henry Bragg — ''The Crystalline State''

1926 G.M. Trevelyan — ''The Two-Party System in English Political History''

1927 Frederick George Kenyon — ''Museums and National Life''

1928 David Meredith Seares Watson — ''Palaeontology and the Evolution of Man''

1929 John Fortescue

1930s

1930 Winston Churchill — ''Parliamentary Government and the Economic Problem''

1931 John Galsworthy — ''The Creation of Character in Literature''

1932 Berkley Moynihan

1933

1934 William Rothenstein — ''Form and content in English Painting''

1935 Gilbert Murray — ''Then and Now''

1936 Donald Francis Tovey — ''Normality and Freedom in Music''

1937 Harley Granville-Barker — ''On Poetry in Drama''

1938 Lord Robert Cecil — ''Peace and Pacifism''

1939 Laurence Binyon — ''Art and freedom''

1940s

1940

1941 William Hailey — ''The position of colonies in a Brisith commonwealth of nations''

1942 Norman Hepburn Baynes — ''Intellectual liberty and totalitarian claims''

1943 Julian Huxley — ''Evolutionary Ethics'' (50 years after his Grandfather gave the lecture)

1944

1945

1946 John Anderson — ''The machinery of government''

1947 Lord Samuel — ''Creative Man''

1948 Lord Brabazon — ''Forty years of flight''

1949 Claud Schuster — ''Mountaineering''

1950s

1950 John Cockcroft — ''The development and future of nuclear energy''

1951 Maurice Hankey — ''The science and art of government''

1952 Lewis Bernstein Namier — ''Monarchy and the party system''

1953 Viscount Simon — ''Crown and Commonwealth''

1954 Kenneth Clark — ''Moments of Vision''

1955 Albert Richardson — ''The significance of the fine arts''

1956 Thomas Beecham — ''John Fletcher''

1957 Ronald Knox — ''On English translation''

1958 Edward Bridges — ''The State and the Arts''

1959 Lord Denning — ''From Precedent to Precedent''

1960s

1960 Edgar Douglas Adrian — ''Factors in mental evolution''

1961 Vincent Massey — ''Canadians and Their Commonwealth''

1962 Cyril Radcliffe — ''Mountstuart Elphinstone''

1963 Violet Bonham Carter — ''The impact of personality in politics'' (45 years after her Father gave the lecture)

1964 Harold Hatley — ''Man and Nature''

1965 Noel Annan — ''The Disintegration of an Old Culture''

1966 Maurice Bowra — ''A case for humane learning''

1967 Rab Butler — ''The Difficult Art of Autobiography''

1968 Peter Medawar — ''Science and Literature''

1969 Lord Holford — ''A World of Room''

1970s

on 14 February 1971)

1971

1972 Karl Popper — ''On the Problem of Body and Mind''

1973 Ernst Gombrich — ''Art History and the Social Sciences''

1974 Solly Zuckermann — ''Advice and Responsibility''

1975

1976 Iris Murdoch — ''The Fire and the Sun: Why Plato banished the artists''

1977

1978 George Porter

1979 Hugh Casson — ''The arts and the academies''

1980s

1980 Jo Grimond — ''Is political philosophy based on a mistake?''

1981 A. J. P. Taylor — ''War in Our Time''

1982

1983

1984 – 5 Miriam Rothschild — ''Animals and Man''

1986 Nicholas Henderson — ''Different Approaches to Foreign Policy''

1987 Norman St. John-Stevas — ''The Omnipresence of Walter Bagehot''

1989

1990s

1990 Saul Bellow — ''The Distracted Public''

1991 Gianni Agnelli — ''Europe: Many Legacies, One Future''

1992 Robert Blake — ''Gladstone, Disraeli and Queen Victoria'' (The Centenary Lecture)

1993 Henry Harris — ''Hippolyte's club foot: the medical roots of realism in modern European literature''

1994 Lord Slynn Of Hadley — ''Europe and Human Rights''

1995 Walter Bodmer — ''The Book of Man''

1996 Roy Jenkins — ''The Chancellorship of Oxford: A Contemporary View with a Little History''

1997 Mary Robinson — ''Realizing Human Rights:"Take hold of it boldly and duly..."''

1998 Amartya Kumar Sen — ''Reason before identity''

1999 Tony Blair — ''The Learning Habit''

2000s

2000 William G. Bowen — ''At a Slight Angle to the Universe: The University in a Digitized, Commercialized Age''

2001 Neil MacGregor — ''The Perpetual Present. The Ideal of Art for All'' ( Newsletter report of the lecture )

2002 Tom Bingham — ''Personal Freedom and the Dilemma of Democracies''

2003 Paul Nurse — ''The great ideas of biology''

2004 Rowan Williams — ''Religious lives''

2005 Shirley M. Tilghman — ''Strange bedfellows: science, politics, and religion''

REFERENCES

The text of each Romanes Lecture is generally published by Oxford University Press using the "Clarendon Press" imprint, and where appropriate the citation for an individual lecture is listed in the published works of each author's entry in Wikipedia.

''Romanes lectures, University of Oxford, 1986–2002'', Oxford, Bodleian Library: MSS. Eng. c. 7027, Top. Oxon. c. 827

''Oxford lectures on philosophy, 1910-1923'', Oxford, The Clarendon Press, 1908-23.

''Oxford lectures on history, 1904-1923'', Oxford, The Clarendon Press 1904-23, which includes "Frontiers", by Lord Curzon, the Romanes lecture for 1907, "Biological analogies in history", by Theodore Roosevelt, the Romanes lecture for 1910, "The imperial peace" by Sir W. M. Ramsay, the Romanes lecture for 1913 and "Montesquieu" by Sir Courtenay Ilbert, the Romanes lecture for 1904.

J.B. Bury, ''Romances of chivalry on Greek soil, being the Romanes lecture for 1911'', Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1911.

Sir E. Ray Lankester: Romanes Lecture, ''Nature and Man,'' Oxford Univ. Press, 1905

For Lord Acton's never-delivered lecture of 1901 see p.234 of ''A History of the University of Cambridge: 1870-1990'' by Christopher Brooke, CUP, ISBN 052134350X

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Romanes Lecture