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Rede Lecture

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The Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture (usually Rede Lecture) at the University of Cambridge.[1] It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the sixteenth century.

Initial series

The initial series of lectures ranges from around 1668 to around 1856. In principle, there were three lectureships each year, on Logic, Philosophy and Rhetoric. These differed from the later individual lectures, in that they were appointments to a lectureship for a period of time, rather than an appointment for a one-off annual lecture. There was also a Mathematics lectureship which dated from an earlier time, while another term used was "Barnaby Lecturer", as the lecturers were elected on St Barnabas Day. A selection of the lecturers, who tended to have studied at Cambridge and be appointed after becoming Fellows of a College, is given below, with a full listing given in the sources.

Mathematics Lecturers

Barnaby Lecturers

Rede Lecturers

New series

From 1858, the lecture was re-established as a one-off annual lecture, delivered by a person appointed by the Vice-Chancellor of the university. The names of the appointees and the titles of their lectures are given below.

1858-1899

1900-1949

1950-1999

2000 onwards

  • 2009 Wen Jiabao See China in the Light of Her Development
  • 2010 Onora O'Neill The Two Cultures Fifty Years On
  • 2011 Harold Varmus The Purpose and Conduct of Science
  • 2015 Drew Gilpin Faust Two Wars and the Long Twentieth Century: the United States, 1861–65; Britain 1914–18

Notes

  1. ^ See [1]. The series was put on its current footing in 1858.
  2. ^ Father of Thomas Starkie.
  3. ^ http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/comm/19th/Arnold.html
  4. ^ http://aleph0.clarku.edu/huxley/SM5/Rede.html
  5. ^ Published as book in 1946