Aubrey Manning is Emeritus Professor of Natural History at the University. He is recognised as one of the country’s leading authorities on animal behaviour. Professor Manning tells the story of life in Scotland and how it is inextricably linked to the history of Earth itself. His lecture begins when the plate tectonics of our dynamic planet began to assemble a bit of the crust we can label ‘Europe’ - about 500 million years ago. This lecture is part of the "Edinburgh Lectures" series, which...

The life of Olympian Eric Liddell is remembered in a lecture by Oscar-winning producer Lord David Puttnam. Lord Puttnam, who made the Academy Award winning film Chariots of Fire about Liddell’s triumph at the 1924 Olympics, gave his talk as part of the Edinburgh Lectures series. Liddell won gold in the 400 metres event in the Paris Olympics while still a student at the University of Edinburgh. He then graduated with a degree in Pure Science before moving to China to do missionary work. He...

By the end of the 18th century, Edinburgh had become one of the most important outposts of Enlightenment and was becoming known as a Modern Athens. How had Edinburgh come to earn this title? In what ways did the meaning of this title change in the following century? What meaning, if any, and what significance does it have today? Dr Nicholas Phillipson lectured in History at Edinburgh from 1965 and retired from full-time employment in 2004 and was appointed Honorary Research Fellow. He has...