Ailsa Sparkes Memorial Lecture: Gold

Gold! Gold is gorgeous stuff, and a very special heavy element. But where did it come from originally, before it got incorporated into the Earth? Where, and when, and how was it created? And how did it get to be  here? The latest astronomy, not alchemy, provides answers to these questions, including the recent observations of binary neutron star mergers.

Prof Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered pulsars as a graduate student in radio astronomy in Cambridge, opening up a new branch of astrophysics - work recognised by the award of a Nobel Prize to her  supervisor.  Subsequently she has been much honoured, holds a sheaf of Honorary Doctorates, and is a member of four prestigious Academies, She has worked in many roles in many branches of astronomy, working part-time while raising a family. Much in demand as a speaker and broadcaster, she is now a Visiting Professor in Oxford, Pro-Chancellor of Trinity College Dublin and President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. She has been President of the Royal Astronomical Society and of the Institute of Physics. In her spare time she gardens, listens to choral music and is active in the Quakers. She has coedited an anthology of poetry with an astronomical theme – ‘Dark Matter; Poems of Space’.

Ailsa Sparkes studied for a PhD in the particle physics group at the University of Edinburgh, graduating in 2013. She sadly passed away in February 2016. This lecture is dedicated to her memory.

All students and staff welcome.

Tea and cakes available in the Magnet Café foyer, James Clerk Maxwell Building, KB from 16.30.