Lincoln Scientists Celebrate the Genius of Sir Isaac Newton

Scientists and mathematicians from the University of Lincoln, UK, will be among the speakers at a unique festival celebrating the genius of Sir Isaac Newton. Based in and around Grantham in Lincolnshire, the Gravity Fields festival explores the physical sciences through science, arts and heritage events, and celebrates the area’s close links with the mathematician known as one of the world’s greatest ever thinkers.

Inspired by the genius of Sir Isaac Newton, the Gravity Fields festival has special significance in 2016; the 350th anniversary of Newton’s ‘Year of Wonders’ (or ‘Annus Mirabilis’), in which he achieved huge scientific advances in his work on light, mathematics and gravitational forces. This year’s festival commemorates the achievements Newton made in 1666, which he spent at Woolsthorpe Manor, his Lincolnshire birthplace, having fled the plague in Cambridge.

Professor Nigel Allinson, Distinguished Chair of Image Engineering at the University of Lincoln, will visit Woolsthorpe Manor to deliver a public talk as part of the festival. Professor Allinson – who leads the ground-breaking PRaVDA medical imagining project which aims to make proton therapy a viable treatment for many more cancer sufferers – will invite festival-goers to take a historical look at imagery from around the world.

Today images are everywhere, with nearly 150,000 pictures posted on Facebook every minute, but Professor Allinson’s talk will begin in 10th century Basra in Iraq. In Less Than 100 Images, he will talk his audience through local heroes (not just Newton, but also a medieval bishop and a humble engineer), to what the future holds; from seeing around corners to holographic television in what promises to be a ‘tour de force’ of entertainment and education.

Less Than 100 Images takes place at 1.30pm on Saturday 24th September 2016. Tickets are priced at £6 each and are available to buy online. Professor Andrei Zvelindovsky, the founding Head of the School of Mathematics and Physics at Lincoln, will also be delivering a fascinating public talk at Woolsthorpe Manor. On Wednesday 21st September, Professor Zvelindovsky will present From Newton’s Light to Electromagnetic Waves. His talk will describe ideas of light, from Newton’s concept of colour to the modern description of electromagnetic waves and their multiple applications.

Professor Zvelindovsky, who has researched the interface between mathematics and physics, will also provide a scientific understanding the Project Sky Cube art installation. Tickets, which are priced at £6, are available to buy on the Gravity Fields website.

Also entertaining audiences at Gravity Fields 2016 will be Dr Danilo Roccatano from the University of Lincoln’s School of Mathematics and Physics. Dr Roccatano, who specialises in computational biophysics, will invite festival goers to join him on an exploration of living cells at a molecular level. His talk will expand on the 1966 Sci-Fi classic film Fantastic Voyage, which imagined exploration of the human body in a cell-sized submarine.

Dr Roccatono’s talk, Exploring the molecular machines within a fantastic voyage, will take audiences on the next step in this journey – exploring the nuts and bolts of our own cells. He will explain how some of the machines used in our daily lives work in a similar way to those within the human body, using the same laws of physics discovered by Sir Isaac Newton in the 17th century.

Dr Roccatono’s event takes place at 5pm on Thursday 22nd September, at the Guildhall Arts Centre in Grantham. Tickets for the talk are priced at £5 or visitors can enjoy the talk and a screening of the Fantastic Voyage film for £7. These are available to buy online.

The talks led by University of Lincoln researchers are part of a packed programme of science, arts, heritage, music, drama and outdoor events, all celebrating Newton’s legacy. Following the theme of ‘genius’, the events range from the dazzling LED umbrellas of international creative artists Cirque Bijou to the brilliant engineers of WW2.For more information visit the Gravity Fields website.

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