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Louise
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All are welcome to attend the lecture on Wednesday 25 September to be given by Bob May at the University of Surrey in Guildford.

Science Advice, Policy Choices and Public Confidence
Lord May of Oxford AC Kt, President of the Royal Society

5.30pm, Austin Pearce Lecture Theatre, Admission Free
The 2002 Leggett Lecture, University of Surrey
Wednesday 25 September 2002
The House of Lords 2000 Report 'Science in Society' identified the need to restore public confidence in science. This report and the major debate it has sparked at all levels of society, both within and outside the world of science has brought some key issues to the fore. Science serves a crucial function in painting the landscape of facts and uncertainties against which democratic public debates about values, beliefs and feelings can take place. Government policymakers need to acknowledge uncertainties in science, despite the fact that the kinds of debate which routinely take place between scientists researching the same field, can be disconcerting in the political arena. Policy choices need to be made once wide consultation has taken place, debate has been open and frank, and all advice has been published and made freely available. Only then can public confidence in science be rebuilt, if the voice of science is heard clarifying our choices and constraints. Of major import!
ance to those of us in the learning business is that the future of our democratic society depends on how the next generation will cope with the scientific developments of tomorrow.

Lord (Robert McCredie) May of Oxford, AC Kt, is currently President of the Royal Society (2000-2005), and holds Professorships in the Department of Zoology, Oxford University and at Imperial College, London, and is a Fellow of Merton College, Oxford.  Previously he was Chief Scientific Adviser to the UK Government and Head of the UK Office of Science and Technology (1995-2000), on leave from his UK Royal Society Research Professorship.  Before that, he was Class of 1977 Professor of Zoology at Princeton University (1973-1988) and Professor of Physics at Sydney University (1969-1973).   Trained as a theoretical physicist/applied mathematician, for the past 25 years or so he has studied various aspects of the way populations and communities are structured, and how they respond to change, both natural and human-created.

Lord May was awarded a Knighthood in 1996 and awarded the Companion of the Order of Australia in 1998, both for "Services to Science".   He is a Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, and an Overseas Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences.   Notable among his many Prizes and Medals are: the 1996 Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the 1998 Balzan Prize presented by the President of Italy and the 2001 Blue Planet Prize. He holds honorary degrees from several universities, including Uppsala, Yale, Princeton and Sydney.

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