Forthcoming events

“London is so large and so wild that it contains no less than everything…But there will be moments of revelation when the city will be seen to harbour the secrets of the human world.” So writes Peter Ackroyd in his fine biography of London.

Prof. Peter Vassallo will deliver a public lecture on these ‘moments of revelation’ in various literary representations of the great metropolis by some of the canonical British authors. It will be held on October 22 at 7 p.m. in the Music Room, St James Cavalier, Valletta, under the auspices of the British Culture Association.

The literary tour of London will dwell on some of the important works by Blake (Songs of Experience), Stevenson (The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde), Conan Doyle (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), Dickens (Bleak House , Sketches by Boz), Conrad (Heart of Darkness), T.S. Eliot (The Waste Land) and Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway).

Lecture on secularisation

‘Is Secularisation on the Reverse Gear?’ is the question to be addressed at the annual lecture of the Institute for Research on the Signs of the Times (Discern) on Tuesday at 7 p.m. at the Phoenicia Hotel, Floriana.

The main speaker is Prof. David Martin, emeritus professor of sociology at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, and a prolific contributor to public and sociological debate about religion.

Near Earth Hazardous Asteroids symposium

An international symposium on near earth hazardous asteroids will be held at the Russian Centre of Science and Culture in Malta (RCSCM), Merchants Street, Valletta, from tomorrow to Friday.

More than 25 scientists from the US and European space agencies, universities and science centres will attend and present papers on studies of the different technologies and methods to improve the detection of hazardous asteroids and determine their orbits and physical characteristics.

The symposium is being co-organised by the RCSCM, the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Space Research Institute, the Institute of Astronomy and Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, in cooperation with the European Space Agency.

The symposium is open to the public. Anyone interested in attending may contact RCSCM director Sergei Medvedev on Tel 2122 2030 or e-mail rcscmalta@onvol.net.

Italian language week

The ninth edition of Week of the Italian language in the World will be held from October 19 to 26 in venues around Malta and Gozo.

It comprises talks by local and internation speakers, concerts and musical performances, organised by the Italian Cultural Institute in collaboration with various entities.

To download the programme of events visit www. iicvalletta.esteri.it/IIC_Lavalletta.

Astrophysics lectures

Over 100 international astrophysicists are visiting Malta from October 19 to 23 for a conference on galaxy formation entitled ‘Hunting for the dark: The hidden side of galaxy formation’. It is organised by the University of Malta’s Department of Physics in collaboration with the University of Central Lancashire.

Some of the astronomers will also be taking part in two public lectures. The first, entitled ‘In Quest of the Cosmic Origins’, is aimed at the public and will be held on October 22 at 7.30 p.m. in the University’s Mathematics and Physics Building, Room 401.

The second lecture, entitled ‘The beauty of scientific research’, is intended for science students and will be held on October 23 at 6 p.m.

To register send an e-mail to physics.sci@um.edu.mt with the date/s of the selected talk/s in the subject caption.