August 2026: Michael Carver presented the achievements of Marconi, which include the transistor radio, television and telephone (which would lead to the everyday mobile phone). Guglielmo Giovanni Maria Marconi was an Italian electrical engineer and inventor known for his creation of a practical radio wave-based wireless telegraph system. This led to his being largely credited as the inventor of radio and sharing the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics with Ferdinand Braun "in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy." Marconi did not receive any formal education during his youth. Instead, he learned chemistry, mathematics, and physics at… Read More

July 2026: Six members chose their favourite element in the Periodic Table of Elements and each gave a short talk to the group. First up was Hydrogen, which has been promoted as a potential replacement for natural gas in domestic gas boilers, with discussion of its possibility and practicality.   An interest in Lithium began in childhood with memories of the mythical dilithium crystals which featured in many episodes of Star Trek. In later years, salts of Lithium were found to be important ingredients in rapid strengthening cement mixtures for repairing airport runways and in rechargeable batteries.  Titanium is a… Read More

June 2026: Our June meeting attracted 14 fellow scientists with 7 of them participating in a group session on the Space Race, covering the period from the end of World War 2 to the present. First up was David, who provided a plastic model of the Saturn V rocket that propelled the first astronauts to the moon. He spoke about the origins of these rockets, from the German V2 to the Soviet Sputnik and Luna 1. Trevor followed on from these early days to discuss the first manned space flights of Yuri Gagarin, Alan Shepherd and John Glenn, which would… Read More

May 2026: Our May meeting was well attended to watch David Johnson’s presentation “Woad to Warfarin”, which discussed the role of textile dyes in the birth of modern medicines for relieving pain and curing diseases.  Early dyes such as woad were known to have antiseptic properties, which might explain why the ancient Britons smeared their bodies before battles with the Roman army.  When new chemicals were found in coal tar in the 19th century, chemists made new colours from them and also new drugs, which were more reliable than herbal medicines. The money generated by dyes advanced our knowledge of… Read More

March 2026: Our March meeting was attended by a group of 22 members to hear our guest speaker, Glenn Turner, a retired master mariner. He discussed waves in the ocean, what you might see when on the sea or on a beach and how to understand what you are observing. Glenn explained that waves in water are caused by the wind blowing over the surface. Wind waves range in size from small ripples to waves over 30 metres high, being influenced by wind speed, duration, fetch (area affected) and the depth of the water. The stronger the wind, the higher… Read More