Filmed Events
In addition to our current online development, we also in earlier years filmed occasional special events, sometimes as highlights and sometimes complete, and you can hear and see some of them here.
Ian Drever looks back at the childhood of his brother Ron who played such a big role in the development of equipment to detect gravitational waves. The story is told of the remarkable role of a Stromness man in the communications at the Battle of Alamein. We pay tribute with a lecture on medicinal plants to the work of the late Mary Beith in Sutherland.
There are highlights of an exhibition on the lost world of Doggerland, and Jane Goodall speaking in St Magnus Cathedral in the 2012 Festival on Reasons for Hope.
We have a Green and Medieval Afternoon at the Earl’s Palace in Kirkwall, highlights of a chemistry show in the Town Hall, and a special event in the Cathedral on a Burns theme, bringing together conservation, wildlife and music.
From childhood tinkering to gravitational waves
Had Prof. Ron Drever lived just a few more months this year, he would almost certainly have been awarded a share of this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics, for his part in one of the greatest scientific achievements of all time, the discovery of gravitational waves.
Big Bill and the Guns of Alamein
The story of Bill and the role of radio communication in the battle was told in the 2017 Orkney International Science Festival by Robbie’s grand-daughter Serena Sutherland, together with Prof. Tom Stevenson and Dorothy Brankin of the Museum of Communication, Burntisland, and Sandy Firth of Orkkney Wireless Musuem.
Pepperwort and Parsley, Beeswax and Fulmar Oil
Mary Beith was known as a lecturer and researcher of great clarity on the traditional medicines of the Highlands.
Europe’s Lost World
Hunters with spears scan an ancient landscape that now lies beneath the waters of the North Sea. The search for the lost world of Doggerland was the subject of two fascinating sessions...
Reasons for Hope OISF 2012
The 12th-century St Magnus Cathedral in Kirkwall was the setting for the lecture Reasons for Hope by Jane Goodall on 7 September 2012 in the annual Orkney International Science Festival.
A Green and Medieval Afternoon 2011
Music and art, crafts and costumes, stories of people and ideas, all in the setting of the Earl’s and Bishop’s Palaces in Kirkwall, Orkney, in the 21st Orkney International Science Festival, September 2011.
Chemistry Show 2010
The Flashing and Banging Chemistry Show lived up to its name in the 2010 Orkney International Science Festival, under the direction of Prof. Donald MacPhee of Aberdeen University.
For A’ That 2009
Part of the Homecoming Scotland year of 2009, the event For A’ That linked the message of Robert Burns’s poem of the same name with issues of social justice and environmental responsibility in the world today.