Vega www.vega.org.uk is a website dedicated to creating high quality science programming for broadcast on television and the internet. It was established in 1995 by Sir Harry Kroto, who won a share of the 1996 Nobel Prize in chemistry for the discovery of the Carbon-60 molecule.
The website contains larger numbers (some 90+) of streaming videos of outstanding scientists communicating their work. It has been commented that once people start watching any of the Feynman lectures, it is hard to stop. Some feel the same way about other programmes such as the Royal Institution Lectures which remind them of watching the Christmas Lectures as a kid.
You can watch the Lindau lectures, in which Nobel prize winners discuss their work in succinct, clear ways. You can watch talks about science and politics (Tony Benn, for example, for British visitors). You can watch John Maynard Smith, the famous evolutionary biologist, who died last year on the 122nd anniversary of Darwin’s death, talking about flight. And there are many more.
If you’re interested in how scientists come to choose this career, take a look at the Snapshots series – 15 minute video clips in which scientists describe how they came into science. You’ll discover that we come from surprisingly diverse backgrounds.
Vega is a delightful site and I’m extremely grateful to having been turned on to it.
Thank you to Mark for the review.