Science is as much a part of culture as literature or music so science too features in the plans for Cork 2005, European Capital of Culture.
As part of the celebrations, columnist on this page, Prof William Reville has lined up a full year of science lectures at University College Cork.
These are definitely lectures with a twist however. Each speaker has been asked to address the audience as though it were their last opportunity to speak in public. As a result the list of subjects for discussion ranges all around the houses.
Nanotechnology specialist at UCD, Prof Donald Fitzmaurice, delivers a lecture in May entitled, "The points race - institutionalised child abuse". The head of medicine at UCC, Prof Fergus Shanahan, speaks in April about the JF Kennedy assassination from a medical perspective.
Reville has assembled an international panel of speakers who will deliver fortnightly talks from January through December. The first talk last week by Dr Paddy Sleeman of UCC's department of zoology, ecology and plant science looked at "Jumping Germs: the effects of animal disease on culture". His rogues' gallery of microbes included the plague, Bovine TB, rabies and other illnesses shared between humans and animals.
There are talks later in the year about whether science has supplanted religion, about how we share many genes with other species, the mathematics of the stock market and the future - if any - for evolution.
The free public lectures are both entertaining and enlightening. They take place at 8 p.m. on Wednesday evenings in the Boole 4 Lecture Theatre at UCC. The next lecture by Dr Edward Walsh on "Science and Technology and the Future of Ireland" takes place on February 2nd. Further information is available by phoning 021-4904127, by e-mailing w.reville@ucc.ie or at http://understandingscience.ucc.ie
Dick Ahlstrom