Thisthatother.co.uk

Prime Music

Listen to over one million songs ad-free. Try it out today

Webworlds

 

The internet at its best, as we remind ourselves each month in Webworlds, is incredible. INCREDIBLE. There is no other word for it. We’ve all been thrown the keys, without even asking, to a spectacular audiovisual library covering the entire wealth of human experience. And every day that passes the world’s great institutions, and countless brilliant individuals, add new contributions – free, mostly, to anyone who cares to visit.

Vega archive: Richard Feynman’s lectures at the University of Auckland

Vega archive: Richard Feynman’s lectures at the University of Auckland

Which brings us to Vega, the site which has inspired this hymn of praise to the worldwide web. The Vega Science Trust is an independent broadcaster of scientific visual and audio media, including many programmes originally shown on BBC TWO’s Learning Zone. Outside its production and TV broadcasting work, Vega is now building an archive of internet videos, which are freely available on its website.

The material, for anyone remotely interested in science and scientific lives, is simply astounding. Vega’s Scientist Archive includes extensive face-to-face interviews with legendary figures such as Max Perutz (Nobel Prize 1966, for discovery of the structure of haemoglobin); Fred Sanger (the father of modern molecular biology, two-times Nobel winner); the physicist Joseph Rottblatt; Walter Kohn (Nobel Prize, 1998, for work on the electronic structure of materials).

As well as its interview series, Vega has made available broadcasts of 10 of the annual Michael Faraday lectures at the Royal Institution – topical lectures on nanotubes, nuclear safety, BSE, pulsars… There is also a priceless archival lecture series by quantum theorist Richard Feynman (held up as the greatest science lecturer ever), lectures from Professor Harry Kroto on astrophysical chemistry, and various Royal Society public lectures.

Pick your science career: Snapshots

Pick your science career: Snapshots

You get the picture. If you’ve never heard of these people, there could no better way to make their acquaintance. If you do know of their work, then you won’t need further convincing.

On top of all this, if you are considering a science career, but have not decided which direction to take, Vega may have just what you’re looking for. The award-winning Snapshots series of 14 short videos on a range of science careers has now been added to the website. The videos, made by the BBC OU, feature young scientists in fields across the physical and natural sciences, as well as engineering and psychology. These are first-class programmes, which engage not by describing not so much what a particular scientist does, as what they are interested in – what they spend their time studying. I want to be an environmental scientist, but that may because I’ve just watched the video. Tomorrow I’ll probably switch to quantum chemistry.

These videos, like all the material on the Vega site, are programmes about exceptional people who are passionately commited to their subject, and to communicating it to the rest of us. Dazzling stuff.