13th Highgate Kyffin Williams Lecture: ‘Kyffin and Colour’

When:
01/02/2021 @ 7:00 pm – 8:30 pm
2021-02-01T19:00:00+00:00
2021-02-01T20:30:00+00:00
Where:
Virtual Zoom Event
Cost:
Free
Contact:
David Smith
07968961395

The 13th Annual Kyffin Williams lecture will take place online at 7 pm on Monday the 1st of February 2021.  It will be delivered by Deri Tomos, Emeritus Professor at Bangor University, and his title will be: ‘Kyffin and Colour’.

Sir Kyffin Williams RA taught art at Highgate from 1944-73 before retiring to Anglesey, the place of his birth, to paint full-time.  He is remembered now as one of Wales’s best-loved artists.  The colours that Kyffin used were a key link between artist and observer.  Deri’s talk will focus on colour in nature and our perception of it, which are a universal part of human experience.  He will investigate current scientific knowledge of the way in which the eye and brain generate the sensation of colour from the electromagnetic quantum field.  Along the way he will consider why the world appears to us in the colours we observe, how variation occurs within the human species and beyond and whether the impression of colour can be altered – as may have been the case with Kyffin’s medication for epilepsy.

Brought up in Cardiff, Deri Tomos studied Natural Sciences at King’s College, Cambridge and stayed to complete a PhD in plant biochemistry.  After subsequently joining the University College of North Wales in Bangor as a research fellow, he was ultimately appointed to be the W. Charles Evans Professor of Physiological Biochemistry in the School of Biological Sciences, retiring in 2016.  Along the way he undertook visiting fellowships in Australia, America and Germany, and has some 120 academic publications on plant cell biophysics and biochemistry to his name.  Deri has had a career-long interest in popularisation of science through the medium of Welsh via broadcasts, lectures and articles.  In recognition of his efforts he was awarded the National Eisteddfod’s Science and Technology Medal in 2017.

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