In 2025 we’re celebrating 200 years of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES and Ri Discourses – both landmark moments in the Ri’s rich history of engaging public audiences with science – as well as the discovery of ...

Genetics is a subject with a long past, but a short history. The trajectory of that history is one of progress and worthy of great celebration. We have dismantled the biological concept of scientific ...

During school holidays we run a range of exciting hands-on workshops, bringing to life all areas of science – including mathematics, computing and engineering. All workshops take place in our building ...

The Royal Institution was founded to 'introduce new technologies and teach science to the general public through lectures and demonstrations'. We've been connecting people to science for over 200 ...

Faraday created the first transformer in August 1831. A few months later he designed and made this simple piece of apparatus based on his ring, developing the first-ever electric generator. This is ...

From the first electrical transformer to the tube that told us why the sky is blue, view the actual objects scientists of the Royal Institution built in some of the world's most famous experiments.

In her first CHRISTMAS LECTURE, Sophie Scott tackles how humans and other animals use sounds to communicate. She looks at chirping crickets, hissing cockroaches and groaning deer to reveal the very ...

The power of visualisation is important to the advancement of theoretical physics. For example, it is possible Michael Faraday's discovery of electromagnetic induction occurred due to his inference ...

The 2024 CHRISTMAS LECTURES are on BBC Four and iPlayer 29, 30 and 31 December at 9pm, and on our YouTube channel for those outside the UK. In this year’s Christmas Lectures, Dr Chris van Tulleken ...

Mathematics is a powerful tool to understand the world around us. It can model the physics, chemistry and biology of a wide variety of systems. But it can also be used to make predictions that can ...

The Royal Institution is a charity that brings the public and scientists together to share their interest and passion for science. We've been doing it for 225 years and have an international reach, ...

The first evidence of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES exists in the form of an advertisement in The Times, seen below, published in 1825. This introduced the first ever CHRISTMAS LECTURES series hosted by John ...