TUESDAY 9 DECEMBER 2008
Middleton Hall, Hull Campus, 6.00 pm
Zest, 17–19 Newland Avenue, Hull, 7.30 pm
Inaugural Jacob Bronowski Lecture
Larkin Centre Visiting Writers Series
‘Science is a very human form of knowledge’: reflections on Jacob Bronowski
Padrika Tarrant
Professor Lisa Jardine, CBE Centenary Professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters Queen Mary, University of London Jacob Bronowski, a member of staff at the University from 1934 to 1942, was one of the pioneers in the public communication of science and its social context. He was a British mathematician of Polish-Jewish origin and is best remembered as the presenter and writer of the BBC television documentary series The Ascent of Man. The inaugural lecture will reflect on Jacob Bronowski – the man, his values and his vision – and will be delivered by his eldest daughter, Professor Lisa Jardine, CBE. Professor Jardine was born in 1944 and was educated at Cambridge, where she gained a BA in Mathematics and English in 1966. She now holds a chair in Renaissance studies at Queen Mary, University of London.
Padrika Tarrant, who lives in Norwich and was educated at the Norwich School of Art Design, published her first book last year. Broken Things (Salt) is a collection of very short, poetically compact stories that carry a punch well beyond their ostensible weight. Her protagonists and narrators are misfits in a world that in turn seems not to fit together as generally accepted, and her skill is in conveying their experiences with a linguistic particularity and abundance of detail that mark her as a writer of outstanding promise.
Public and Inaugural Lectures December 2008
MONDAY 8 DECEMBER 2008
‘Her writing is superbly precise, her intensity of vision luminous, her perception deeply humane, tender yet terrifying.’ George Szirtes, on the jacket of Broken Things ‘The hallucinatory landscape of Broken Things invades the reader's consciousness, too.’ Nicholas Clee, in The Guardian
Further information Heather Budgen, Vice-Chancellor’s Office, The University of Hull 01482 465131 heather.budgen@hull.ac.uk
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