The Beatty Memorial Lecture is a distinguished annual lecture coordinated by McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The lecture series was inaugurated in 1952 to honour Edward Wentworth Beatty, the first Canadian-born president of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the former chancellor of McGill, a position he held from 1921 until his death in 1943. [1] Each year, an internationally renowned visitor presents a public lecture on a subject of their choice, providing an opportunity for the McGill community and the general public to "further their education on topical issues." [2]
The motto of the lecture series is, "Change Through Exchange". [3]
Themes covered in past Beatty Lectures have ranged in focus, from politics, philosophy, science, comedy and urbanization, to the environment and literature. Past lecturers have included Nobel Laureates, leading neuroscientists, renowned musicians and trailblazing activists. [4] Some of the most famous lecturers have included Margaret Atwood; [5] Richard Dawkins; Deepak Chopra, Muhammad Yunus, Queen Noor of Jordan, Jane Goodall, Saul Bellow, Arthur Ashe and Douglas Copland. [6]
An anthology featuring 15 past Beatty Lectures titled With the World to Choose From: Celebrating Seven Decades of the Beatty Lecture at McGill University [31] was published by McGill-Queen's University Press in 2021, including lectures by Barbara Ward, Robert Sinsheimer, Mikhail Gorbachev, Muhammad Yunus, Charles Taylor, and Roxane Gay. [32]
Richard Dawkins is a British evolutionary biologist, zoologist, and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford, and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. His 1976 book The Selfish Gene popularised the gene-centred view of evolution, as well as coining the term meme. Dawkins has won several academic and writing awards.
Dame Jane Morris Goodall, formerly Baroness Jane van Lawick-Goodall, is an English primatologist and anthropologist. She is considered the world's foremost expert on chimpanzees, after 60 years' studying the social and family interactions of wild chimpanzees. Goodall first went to Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania to observe its chimpanzees in 1960.
Margaret Eleanor Atwood is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight children's books, two graphic novels, and a number of small press editions of both poetry and fiction. Atwood has won numerous awards and honors for her writing, including two Booker Prizes, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, the Franz Kafka Prize, Princess of Asturias Awards, and the National Book Critics and PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Awards. A number of her works have been adapted for film and television.
Deepak Chopra is an Indian-American author and alternative medicine advocate. A prominent figure in the New Age movement, his books and videos have made him one of the best-known and wealthiest figures in alternative medicine. His discussions of quantum healing have been characterized as technobabble – "incoherent babbling strewn with scientific terms" derided by those proficient in physics.
The Reith Lectures is a series of annual BBC radio lectures given by leading figures of the day. They are commissioned by the BBC and broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. The lectures were inaugurated in 1948 to mark the historic contribution made to public service broadcasting by Lord Reith, the corporation's first director-general.
The Massey Lectures is an annual five-part series of lectures given in Canada by distinguished writers, thinkers and scholars who explore important ideas and issues of contemporary interest. Created in 1961 in honour of Vincent Massey, the former Governor General of Canada, it is widely regarded as one of the most acclaimed lecture series in the country.
Sir Bernard Rowland Crick was a British political theorist and democratic socialist whose views can be summarised as "politics is ethics done in public". He sought to arrive at a "politics of action", as opposed to a "politics of thought" or of ideology, and he held that "political power is power in the subjunctive mood." He was a leading critic of behaviouralism.
Joseph A. Schwarcz is an author and a sessional instructor at McGill University. He is the director of McGill's Office for Science and Society.
Alanis Obomsawin, is an Abenaki American-Canadian filmmaker, singer, artist, and activist primarily known for her documentary films. Born in New Hampshire, United States and raised primarily in Quebec, Canada, she has written and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations issues. Obomsawin is a member of Film Fatales independent women filmmakers.
Alister Edgar McGrath is a Northern Irish theologian, Anglican priest, intellectual historian, scientist, Christian apologist, and public intellectual. He currently holds the Andreas Idreos Professorship in Science and Religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion, and is a fellow of Harris Manchester College at the University of Oxford, and is Professor of Divinity at Gresham College. He was previously Professor of Theology, Ministry, and Education at King's College London and Head of the Centre for Theology, Religion and Culture, Professor of Historical Theology at the University of Oxford, and was principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford, until 2005.
Gotham Chopra is an American sports documentarian, media entrepreneur, producer, podcast host, director, journalist, and author. He is a co-founder of Religion of Sports, Liquid Comics, Chopra Media, and the Chopra Well. He is known for his sports-centric films, having worked with athletes such as Tom Brady, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Simone Biles and Michael Strahan.
McGill University is an English-language public research university located in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Founded in 1821 by royal charter, the university bears the name of James McGill, a Scottish merchant, whose bequest in 1813 established the University of McGill College. In 1885, the name was officially changed to McGill University. The university has an enrolment of more than 39,000 students.
Jerry Allen Coyne is an American biologist and skeptic known for his work on speciation and his commentary on intelligent design. A professor emeritus at the University of Chicago in the Department of Ecology and Evolution, he has published numerous papers on the theory of evolution. His concentration is speciation and ecological and evolutionary genetics, particularly as they involve the fruit fly, Drosophila. In 2023 he became a fellow with the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry.
Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth is a non-fiction book written by Margaret Atwood, about the nature of debt, for the 2008 Massey Lectures. Each of the book's five chapters was delivered as a one-hour lecture in a different Canadian city, beginning in St. John's, Newfoundland, on October 12 and ending in Toronto on November 1. The lectures were broadcast on CBC Radio One's Ideas November 10–14. The book was published by House of Anansi Press, both in paperback and in a limited edition hardcover.
Gary Gerstle is an American historian and the Paul Mellon Professor of American History at the University of Cambridge, and a Fellow of Sidney Sussex College.
Victoria Michelle Kaspi is a Canadian astrophysicist and a professor at McGill University. Her research primarily concerns neutron stars and pulsars.
The Bristol Festival of Ideas is a project established in Bristol, England, which aims "to stimulate people’s minds and passions with an inspiring programme of discussion and debate". It was first set up in 2005, as part of the city's ultimately unsuccessful bid to become the European Capital of Culture for 2008, and continues to maintain a programme of debates and other events, including an annual festival each May.
Sandra Djwa is a Canadian writer, critic and cultural biographer. Originally from Newfoundland, she moved to British Columbia where she obtained her PhD from the University of British Columbia in 1968. In 1999, she was honored to deliver the Garnett Sedgewick Memorial Lecture in honor of the department's 80th anniversary. She taught Canadian literature in the English department at Simon Fraser University from 1968 to 2005 when she retired as J.S. Woodsworth Resident Scholar, Humanities. She was part of a seventies movement to establish the study of Canadian literature and, in 1973, cofounded the Association for Canadian and Québec Literatures (ACQL). She was Chair of the inaugural meeting of ACQL. She initiated textual studies of the poems of E. J. Pratt in the eighties, was editor of Poetry, "Letters in Canada" for the University of Toronto Quarterly (1980-4), and Chair of Canadian Heads and Chairs of English (1989).
Margaret Lock is a distinguished Canadian medical anthropologist, known for her publications in connection with an anthropology of the body and embodiment, comparative epistemologies of medical knowledge and practice, and the global impact of emerging biomedical technologies.
The George Gamow Memorial Lectures are an annual series of lectures at the University of Colorado Boulder, named in honor of the physicist and science popularizer George Gamow, author of One Two Three... Infinity and the Mr Tompkins series.