Isaac Newton Christmas Lecture

Space travel: from fantasy to reality and beyond

a duo public lecture (including 20 minutes interval) by

Dr Fabien Paillusson

School of Mathematics and Physics, University of Lincoln

and

Dr Anna Marie Roos

School of History & Heritage, University of Lincoln

Wednesday 20 December 2017

6 pm – 7:40 pm

Lecture Theatre in the new Isaac Newton building, Brayford Pool Campus, University of Lincoln

This special Christmas lecture consists of two short parts of 25-30 minutes each with 20 minutes interval, during which a bar will be open where visitors can buy mulled or usual wine and soft drinks. After the second talk there will be some time for questions.

Stories about leaving the Earth to visit other worlds have existed since ancient times. The specific content and focus of these stories depend on the culture and time period one is looking at. In the first part of this duo public lecture, Dr Anna Marie Roos will share with the audience various accounts of space travel ranging from antiquity to the 17th century. In the second part, Dr Fabien Paillusson will discuss more specifically how Newtonian and post-Newtonian scientific ideas compel us to think anew some of the basic premises of space travel.

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Anna Marie Roos is a Reader in the history of science and medicine at the University of Lincoln. She has a  B.A. in Molecular Biology, M.H. in Humanities and a Ph.D. in History from the University of Colorado (USA). She came to Lincoln in 2013 from the University of Oxford, where she was the Lister Research Fellow.  Anna Marie is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a Fellow of the Linnean Society of London, and a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She studies the early Royal Society, as well as natural history, chemistry, and medicine in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her scientific and historical work has been featured in Nature News, Wellcome History, the Guardian and the New York Times.

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Fabien Paillusson is a Lecturer in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Lincoln. He holds the degrees of M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from the University Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris (formerly the Sorbonne), France. He came to Lincoln in 2015 from Durham University and previously also worked at the University of Cambridge and the University of Barcelona in Spain. He publishes on a wide range of topics spanning the physical and life sciences, from granular materials to DNA. His broader interests lie in Theoretical and Computational modelling, the Foundations of Physics, Physics and Maths Education, AI (Machine Learning and Automated Reasoning), Logic and the Philosophy of Science.

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