The 2016 Fred Jevons Science Policy Lecture will be delivered by the Rt. Hon the Lord Willetts, the Executive Director of the Resolution Foundation, and Former Minister for Universities and Science. His lecture, on Monday 25 July 2016, will discuss how government supports science and technology, and how it can frame an effective industrial strategy.
The lecture will be followed by afternoon tea for all participants.
The Fred Jevons Science Policy Lecture commemorates the founding professor of ‘Liberal Studies in Science’ at Manchester. Manchester has long been a major centre for social, economic and historical studies of science and technology, a history consolidated by the establishment of a Department of Liberal Studies in Science in the 1960s. That scholarly tradition is today maintained by the University of Manchester’s Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, which collectively constitute one of the world’s major centres of expertise in the social, historical, economic and political analysis of science and technology.
This event is free to attend but you must register to reserve a place. Please register here:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/fred-jevons-science-policy-lecture-2016-lord-willetts-tickets-26149434663
The Rt Hon. Lord David Willetts is the Executive Chair of the Resolution Foundation. He served as the Member of Parliament for Havant (1992-2015), as Minister for Universities and Science (2010-2014) and previously worked at HM Treasury and the Number 10 Policy Unit.
Lord Willetts is a visiting Professor at King’s College London, Governor of the Ditchley Foundation, Chair of the British Science Association and a member of the Council of the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
Lord Willetts has written widely on economic and social policy. His book ‘The Pinch’ was published by Atlantic Books in 2010.
Born in Austria in 1929. Frederick Raphael Jevons came to the UK as a child refugee from the Holocaust. Originally a biochemist Fred was appointed to the first Chair of Liberal Studies in Science in 1966, an initiative to produce rounded science graduates better equipped to win leadership roles in government, industry and academia, promoted by leading Manchester science professors including Brian (later Lord) Flowers. Jevons enthusiastically took up this challenge, building a department and a curriculum from scratch. Jevons left Manchester in 1976 to become the founding Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University, but returned to Manchester during 1992 as a Simon visiting Fellow. He died in September 2012. His works include Wealth from Knowledge (1972), a landmark in the empirical study of technological innovation and the roles of science within it, and Science Observed (1973).
