Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science

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The Simonyi Professorship for the Public Understanding of Science is a chair at the University of Oxford. The chair was established in 1995 for the ethologist Richard Dawkins by an endowment from Charles Simonyi.[1][2] The aim of the Professorship is "to communicate science to the public without, in doing so, losing those elements of scholarship which constitute the essence of true understanding". It is a position that had been endowed by Charles Simonyi with the express intention that the holder "be expected to make important contributions to the public understanding of some scientific field",[3] and that its first holder should be Richard Dawkins.[4]

Richard Dawkins explain the history of the creation of the chair in a chapter of his memoirs, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science.[2] In 2008, Dawkins retired and the Oxford mathematician Marcus du Sautoy was elected to the chair.[5][6]

List of Simonyi Professors

List of Simonyi Lectures

Richard Dawkins established an annual "Charles Simonyi Lecture" at the University of Oxford. He invited the following speakers:[7][8]

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2

Marcus du Sautoy, second Simonyi Professor, invited:[8] <templatestyles src="Div col/styles.css"/>

2

Notes and references

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Bibliography

External links

  1. ↑ Charles Simonyi's manifesto, University of Oxford (page visited on 6 December 2015).
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Richard Dawkins, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, Bantam Press, 2015 (ISBN 978-0-59307-256-1). Chapter "Simonyi Professor", pages 271-307.
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  7. ↑ Richard Dawkins, Brief Candle in the Dark: My Life in Science, Bantam Press, 2015, page 282 (ISBN 978-0-59307-256-1).
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 The Simonyi Lectures, University of Oxford (page visited on 6 December 2015).
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