The Whidden Lectures are a lecture series at McMaster University, funded in 1954 by E. Carey Fox. [1] They commemorate Howard P. Whidden, who was Chancellor of the university from 1923 to 1941. [2] They were first given in 1956. Many of the lectures have been published in book form, by Oxford University Press.
Brian David Josephson is a British theoretical physicist and professor emeritus of physics at the University of Cambridge. Best known for his pioneering work on superconductivity and quantum tunnelling, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1973 for his prediction of the Josephson effect, made in 1962 when he was a 22-year-old PhD student at Cambridge University. Josephson is the first Welshman to have won a Nobel Prize in Physics. He shared the prize with physicists Leo Esaki and Ivar Giaever, who jointly received half the award for their own work on quantum tunnelling.
Spiritual ecology is an emerging field in religion, conservation, and academia that proposes that there is a spiritual facet to all issues related to conservation, environmentalism, and earth stewardship. Proponents of spiritual ecology assert a need for contemporary nature conservation work to include spiritual elements and for contemporary religion and spirituality to include awareness of and engagement in ecological issues.
Hugh Alan Craig Cairns, was a Canadian political scientist and professor. His scholarship focused on diverse topics within Canadian politics, including federalism, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, electoral politics, the role of the courts, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and Indigenous issues. Cairns was a leading expert of federalism and governance, and his scholarship remains foundational in Canadian political science.
Robert K. Logan, originally trained as a physicist, is a media ecologist.
Richard Borshay Lee is a Canadian anthropologist. Lee has studied at the University of Toronto and University of California, Berkeley, where he received a Ph.D. He holds a position at the University of Toronto as Professor Emeritus of Anthropology. Lee researches issues concerning the indigenous people of Botswana and Namibia, particularly their ecology and history.
Montpellier 2 University was a French university in the académie of Montpellier. It was one of the three universities formed in 1970 from the original University of Montpellier. Its main campus neighbors the Montpellier 3 University's main campus, and for this reason the nearest tramway station is named "Universities of Sciences and Literature" rather than "University of Sciences". In January 2015, Montpellier 1 University and Montpellier 2 University merged into the Montpellier University.
Rupert Emerson was a professor of political science and international relations. He served on the faculty of Harvard University for forty-three years and served in various U.S government positions.
Bethwell Allan Ogot is a Kenyan historian and eminent African scholar who specialises in African history, research methods and theory. One of his works starts by saying that "to tell the story of a past so as to portray an inevitable destiny is, for humankind, a need as universal as tool-making. To that extent, we may say that a human being is, by nature, historicus.
Ian Thomas Ramsey was a British Anglican bishop and academic. He was Professor of the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Oxford, and Bishop of Durham from 1966 until his death in 1972. He wrote extensively on the problem of religious language, Christian ethics, the relationship between science and religion, and Christian apologetics. As a result, he became convinced that a permanent centre was needed for enquiry into these inter-disciplinary areas; and in 1985 the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion at the University of Oxford was set up to promote discussion on the problems raised for theology and ethics by developments in science, technology and medicine.
René Lemarchand is a French-American political scientist who is known for his research on ethnic conflict and genocide in Rwanda, Burundi and Darfur. Publishing in both English and French, he is particularly known for his work on the concept of clientelism. He is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Florida, and continues to write, teach internationally and consult. Since retiring he has worked for USAID out of Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire as a Regional Consultant for West Africa in Governance and Democracy, and as Democracy and Governance advisor to USAID / Ghana.
Beric W. Skews is the director of the Flow Research Unit at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. He is a leading expert in the field of compressible gas dynamics, and is author of over two hundred publications, mainly in the field of shock wave dynamics and high-speed photography.
Charles De Koninck was a Belgian-Canadian Thomist philosopher and theologian. As director of the Department of Philosophy at the Université Laval in Quebec, he influenced Catholic philosophy in French Canada and also influenced Catholic philosophers in English Canada and the United States. The author of many books and articles in French and English, he contributed to a variety of philosophical fields including natural philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, and political philosophy, but he also wrote on theology, especially Mariology.
The Trotter Prize is awarded at Texas A&M University and is part of an endowed lecture series. It is awarded "for pioneering contributions to the understanding of the role of information, complexity and inference in illuminating the mechanisms and wonder of nature" and includes The Trotter Lecture which "seeks to reveal connections between science and religion, often viewed in academia as non-overlapping, if not rival, worldviews.
Robin Horton was an English social anthropologist and philosopher. Horton carried out specialised study in comparative religion since the 1950s where he challenged and expanded views in the study of the anthropology of religion. He is notable for his comparison of traditional thought systems to Western science. This formed the basis for his analysis of African thought that he published in two instalments in 1967. His work continues to be viewed as important in understanding traditional African religious approaches. For more than four decades Horton lived in Africa, where he conducted research on African indigenous religions, magic, mythology and rituals. During 40 years of residence in Africa, he worked as a researcher and a professor of philosophy and religion at several universities, including the University of Port Harcourt in Rivers State, Nigeria, and the University of Ife in Osun State, Nigeria.
Joanna Dunkley is a British astrophysicist and Professor of Physics at Princeton University. She works on the origin of the Universe and the Cosmic microwave background (CMB) using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the Simons Observatory and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).