The Foundation Lecture is the College's major annual public lecture.
The first lecture in the series, 'Antibiotics and Therapy in Perspective', was given in 1969 by Nobel Laureate and alumnus Sir Ernst Chain (one of the discoverers of antibiotics) as a Centenary Lecture, to celebrate the admission of the first non-collegiate students in 1869.
2021 | Professor Linda Colley
The Drawbacks of Political Stability: The British Case.
This lecture took place on Thursday 11 November. Professor Colley, the Shelby M.C. Davis 1958 Professor of History at Princeton University, is an expert on British, imperial and global history since 1700.
2020 | Professor Diane Coyle
How do we know whether there’s progress?
(Event postponed to March 2021, due to the November 2020 COVID-19 lockdown.)
2019 | Professor Bhaskar Vira
From the Himalayas to the Fens: Towards a Political Economy of Environment and Development
2018 | Professor Paul Muldoon
A Feast and a Famine: James Joyce’s “The Dead”
2017 | Professor Catherine Barnard
2016 | Professor David Cardwell
Bulk Superconductors: Revolution or Red Herring?
2015 | Professor Maurice Bloch
The Contributions of British Social Anthropology to the Human Sciences
2014 | Professor Shankar Balasubramanian
Decoding Human Genomes on a Population Scale
2013 | Ken Olisa OBE
Double Standards: Perspectives on Life in Public Companies and Public Office
2012 | Helena Morrissey CBE
Women on Boards: The Power of an Idea whose Time has Come
2011 | Professor John Mullan
The Business of Literary Fiction
2010 | Professor Angus Deaton
The Wellbeing of the World: Global Patterns of Health, Wealth and Happiness
2009 | Professor Andrew Motion
The Growth of a Poet’s Mind
2007 | Professor Colin Blakemore
Whose Science is it Anyway?
2006 | Professor Chris Rapley
Antarctica – Closer Than You Think
2005 | Lord Butler of Brockwell
Cabinet Government
2004 | Professor Martin Millett
The Archaeology of Social Integration in the Roman World
2003 | Sir Peter Bazalgette
Whatever You Need, Whatever You Want: Television’s Shift from Paternalism to Populism
2002 | Dr David Starkey CBE
The Modern Monarchy: Rituals of Privacy and Their Subversion
2001 | Professor Baroness Susan Greenfield
The Brain of the Future
2000 | Professor Norman Pounds
The Diocletian Line and the Balkans Conflict
1999 | Professor Lord Winston
GM Tots
1998 | Professor Robert Lethbridge
Paris, Painting and Pretexts
1997 | Mrs Steve Shirley
The Journey to Empowerment
1996 | Dr Robin Porter Goff
Newton to Giotto and other Dimensions of Engineering
1995 | Sir Louis Blom-Cooper
A Free and Wayward Press: A Question of Regulation
1994 | Professor F Garcia-Moliner
Science as a Question of General Interest
1993 | Lord St John of Fawsley
The Select Committees – Why, How and What Next?
1992 | Professor Tony Cross
St Petersburg and the British in the 18th Century
1991 | Professor Alan Cuthbert
The Natural (and Unnatural) History of Disease
1990 | Dr Nigel Kenney
England’s Green and Pleasant Land – Now and Forever?
1989 | Professor Richard Smith Britain’s
Ageing Population: A Historian’s View
1988 | Dr Harry Hudson
Living with Fungi – Choice or Obligation
1987 | Dr David Pearl
He Who Openeth the Door: British Immigration Law and Policy and the South Asian Family
1986 | Dr Clifford Roberton
Viability in Pre-Term Infants – Is there a Limit?
1985 | Professor Tony Bottoms
The Short, Sharp Shock: History, Research and Ideology
1984 | Professor Brian Johnson
The Shape of Things to Come
1983 | Dr Jack Dominian
The Foundation of the Personality from Anger to Love
1982 | Dr César Milstein
Monoclonal Antibodies: a Windfall of Basic Research
1981 | Professor Sir James Holt
Robin Hood
1980 | Mr Humphrey Burton
Television in the 80s: the Decline and Fall of the BBC
1979 | Professor John Coles
Experimental Archaeology
1975 | Revd Dr Basil Hall
Boz v Stiggins: Dickens and Religion
1974 | Sir Eric Thompson
The Civilisation of the Maya
1973 | Dr Walter Grave
The Early History of Fitzwilliam College
1972 | Dr Edward Miller
The Medieval Countryside of Northern England
1971 | Mr Lee Kuan Yew
East and West: the Twain Have Met
1970 | Professor Gordon Rupp
Thomas Müntzer and the Problems of a ‘Just Revolution'
1969 | Professor Ernst Chain
Antibiotics and Therapy in Perspective