Past Colloquia

The five elements

Already in Greek antiquity, but probably elsewhere and at other times, humans wondered to what extent it was possible to break down objects, natural or not, into their primordial elements. One of these decompositions proposed that earth, water, fire and air were the four elements of which everything is constructed, but a fifth element seemed necessary to complete the picture: life.

• Read more

  The Wright 2022 Conference takes these five elements and offers an original and kaleidoscopic look at our planet, Earth. Each of the elements, which the ancients considered fundamental, is part of the structure of our environment. Each one is familiar and yet each one conceals a richness that the science of the last few years allows us to better understand. All are deeply interconnected. The understanding of the nature of these elements is essential to understand our environment, to allow us to better evaluate the human action on the planet and therefore to better preserve it.

  Earth: mountains and continents seem immutable, yet they evolve under the influence of underlying movements, but also under the influence of air and water. Fire: volcanoes shape the earth’s surface, they contribute to recycle chemical elements between the earth’s crust and the atmosphere, a cycle that is essential to life. Water: the oceans are not calm and voluptuous under their surface but are subject to movements on all scales. These movements are essential to the distribution of heat and chemical elements. Air: is not only oxygen, carbon dioxide and nitrogen, but it also contains fine solid particles, aerosols, coming from the earth and the oceans which play a major role in the formation of clouds for example. Life: its origin, its very nature, is still a mystery and yet, we are here and alive.

The art of maths

Maths. For some, a stimulating discipline, an exciting mental game, for others, a complex, opaque and difficult world. But whatever our perception or view might be, mathematics is fascinating. As a fundamental discipline at the interface of natural sciences, philosophy and the arts, mathematics deserves its place in the Wright Colloquia for science.

Discipline fondamentale, à l’interface des sciences naturelles, de la philosophie et des arts, les mathématiques se devaient d’avoir leur place dans les Colloques Wright pour la science.

Gravity – Universal attraction

The 18th Wright Colloquium for Science, organized by the Foundation H.Dudley Wright in partnership with the University of Geneva, was once again the scene of a wonderful meeting between the scientific world and the general public.

This year the Colloquium dealed with gravitation, this force which is at the same time familiar to us, because it allows us to keep our feet on the ground and which is at the same time the origin of extreme phenomena such as black holes and Gravitational waves discovered quite recently.

From November 5th to 9th, five public lectures given by the most eminent scientists in this field allowed us to approach the applications of gravitation in space travel in the confines of the solar system and the extreme consequences of this facelling force.

• Read more

  The Foundation H.Dudley Wright has dedicated the 2018 edition of the Wright Colloquium for Science to the tremendous scientific advances around gravity, the universal attraction. From 5 to 9 November, five conferences open to the general public in the Dufour building of the University of Geneva:

  Monday November 5, 18h30
  Prof. Thibault Damour, IHES, France will talk about the gravitational force and its extreme consequences.

  Thuesday November 6, 18h30
  Dr. Andrea Accomazzo, Spacecraft Operation Manager, Head of the Solar and Planetary Mission Division in the Mission Operation Dep at ESA Eropean Space Agency, will talk about the ROSETTA mission odyssey to a distant comet.

  Wednesday November 7, 18h30
  Prof, Claudia de Rham, Imperial College London, will talk about the history of the Universe in relation to gravitational forces.

  Thursday November 8, 18h30
  Prof. Gabriela Gonzalez, Louisiana State University, Department of Physics & Astronomy, will talk about the discovery in 2015 of gravitational waves.

  Friday november 9, 18h30
  Prof. Andrew Strominger, Harvard University, Department of Physics, will talk about the still mysterious interface between gravitation and quantum mechanics.

  Conferences were in French or English with simultaneous interpretation in the other language.

  A SOUND AND LIGHT SHOW

  

  The Colloquium was accompanied by a sound and light show that illuminated the facade of the Uni Bastions building. The show evoked in an artistic and poetic way the theme of the conference: gravity, universal attraction. Every night, young and adults were able to forget the greyness of winter and carried away on a journey to the heart of the universe. They were able to come to dream in front of the oldest building of the University which was animated with a thousand lights and images punctuated in music.

DECODING THE BOOK OF LIFE - The genomic revolution

The Foundation H. Dudley Wright dedicated the 2016 edition of the Wright Colloquium for Science to genomics, the study of how life functions at the scale of the genome. Four public lectures, one each by a neuroscientist, a geneticist, a biologist and a philosopher, helped participants better understand the tremendous impact of genome decoding on personalized medicine, its decisive contribution to the confirmation that humans belongs to the sub-group of primates known as the Great Apes, and the stakes for the future that will inevitably follow “improvements” in humans.

• Read more

  Geneva-based Le Temps newspaper, a partner of this 17th edition of the Wright Colloquium for Science, relayed and analyzed in its columns the major scientific revelations made by the four speakers. Discover the articles on Linda Buck, Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2014, Michel Snyder, Director of the Stanford Center for Genomics and Personalized Medicine at Stanford University, Svante Paabo, Director of the Genetics Department at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, and Peter Sloterdijk, Professor at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Germany.

  Linda Buck: Percer les mystères de l’odorat en voyant à travers le cerveau >>
  Michael Snyder: La médecine deviendra une science guidée par les données >>
  Svante Pääbo: Je cherche à identifier ce qui rend les hommes modernes uniques >>
  Peter Sloterdijke: On a toujours éliminé les surhommes >>

  For this 17th colloquium, the young people of Geneva’s schools were the guests of honor. Over the course of one day, they visited the laboratories of the Faculty of Science and discussed with scientists the fundamental questions surrounding the user manual for life.

  These meetings between scientists and the general public were interspersed with several nocturnal projections that, during a spectacular sound and light show followed by 37,000 spectators, transformed the Bastions building’s façade into an extraordinary journey into the heart of life.

  Without a doubt, this 17th Colloquium has enabled a wide audience to understand the extent to which the genomic revolution is a major and decisive step forward in the understanding of life and in the capacity that science now has to make humans “improvable”.

THE SECRETS OF THE SUN
Origin, climate and energy, this 16th Colloquium kept all of its promises, beating records for attendance. From 10 to 14 November 2014, more than 20,000 enthusiasts were fascinated and awed by the conferences that took place at the University of Geneva, as well as by the by the magnificent sound and light show that was projected on the building facades from the Parc des Bastions. There is no doubt that the 16th Colloquium allowed the sun to reveal some of its great secrets to an ever-growing audience come to meet the scientific world.

• Read more

  University of Geneva, Physics Department

  The Foundation H. Dudley Wright dedicated the 2014 edition of the Wright Colloquia to the Sun, giving the stage to astrophysicist, climatologists and chemists. From 10 to 14 November 2014, four conferences allowed participants to better understand our Sun through themes such as “We, the children of the stars”, “Journey to the center of the sun”, and “Solar cycles and global warming”. These exchanges between scientists and the public were punctuated by several evening screenings where we saw the Sun and its gigantic eruptions play majestically over the architecture of the buildings in the Bastions.

  
  
  

  Beyond a boundless fascination for the beauty of our star in perpetual activity, more than 20,000 spectators discovered its vital role in building our solar system: no Sun, no planets. Without the Sun, without its birth 4.5 billion years ago, neither the Earth nor the seven other planets in our solar system would have seen the light of day. It is now recognized that the formation of planets is consubstantial to that of the stars. It has taken a lot of theoretical work and many experiments to reach this certitude. Satellites and space probes sent to various planets have brought back valuable information. And to those who have still doubted that this planetary phenomenon is widespread, the discovery of exoplanets by the hundreds, revolving around stars other than our Sun, has provided indubitable proof. There are doubtless many other “living” worlds in our galaxy, nurtured by the brightness of their stars.

  
  
  
  
  

  Press release (FR)

Since their inception, the Wright Science Colloquia themes have centered around issues relevant to "Man and his Universe". Specific themes have ranged from the formation of the universe to contemporary issues related to the environment, human health, and technology.

Paralleling the advances made in research technology and influence of Internet communications on knowledge dissemination, the Colloquia themes began addressing more complex interdisciplinary science reflecting current challenges and breakthrough discoveries with potentially significant impact on policy and governance at all levels, globally.

The Foundation continues to develop more innovative public science communications with the latest edition of the Colloquium.

In the late 1990s, the Foundation underwrote two public science colloquia in collaboration with the Max Planck Institute based on the model that had been so successful in Geneva.