It's the Master (not really)
This afternoon there were a series of lectures down the road at Manchester Grammar School. I chose to go to a talk on the history of philosophy and how it has influenced modern day science. After that I sat at the back of the talk on "The Life and Death of Stars" by John Thompson, a friend of mine from Macclesfield Astronomical Society who is a physics teacher at William Hulme Grammar school. Both talks were good, and the audiences, made up of sixth form students from across Manchester, seemed genuinely interested.
This was all leading up to the main event, a talk by the current Astronomer Royal, Sir Martin Rees. He presented a series on Channel 4 last year on "What We Still Don't Know" which was very theatrically done, lots of shots of him wearing black and looking thoughtful, with all the interviewees sat on staircases. He reminded me of the Master from Doctor Who! Not suprisingly, he doesn't look very scary in real life! He's a good speaker, and somehow shorter than I imagined him.
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