- October 2005
Sir Isaac Newton: hero, genius and England’s leading scientific thinker. What will he do to keep it that way? When Newton accuses German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz of plagiarising his invention of calculus, he begins a bitter conflict over priority. Newton assembles a committee of eleven honourable men, all Fellows of the Royal Society, to adjudicate on the matter. But is their decision really their own? When reputations are at stake, what place do morals have in deciding who was first?
Calculus reveals a darker side of Newton, who was recently voted Man of the Millennium, examining whether his calculations went far beyond mathematics alone.
Free talks discussing the themes explored in Calculus will precede each performance. Talks are open to all and will begin at 6:30pm in the ADC bar. For further details of speakers please visit www.topquarkproductions.org.uk.
- October 2004
Sir Isaac Newton: hero, genius and England’s leading scientific thinker.
What will he do to keep it that way?
When Newton accuses German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz of plagiarising
his invention of calculus, he begins a bitter conflict over priority.
Newton assembles a committee of eleven honourable men, all Fellows of the
Royal Society, to adjudicate on the matter. But is their decision really
their own?
When reputations are at stake, what place do morals have in deciding who
was first?
Top Quark Productions' staged reading of this play is to complement the production of Oxygen, co-written by Carl Djerassi.
- October 2004
What is discovery? Why is it important to be first?
To celebrate the centenary of the Nobel Prize, the Nobel Foundation decides to award a 'retro-Nobel' for accomplishments preceding the establishment of the prize in 1901. The Nobel Committee decides to recognise the work that launched the Chemical Revolution: the discovery of oxygen.
Chemists Lavoisier, Priestley and Scheele seem natural choices, but the committee (full of academic rivals, ex-lovers and even an historian) can't seem to agree. While the committee attempt to determine whether they wish to acknowledge the first to experiment, to publish, or to fully understand the work, the candidates themselves join their wives in 1777 Stockholm to promote their work to King Gustav III.
In Oxygen, authors Carl Djerassi and Nobel Laureate Roald Hoffmann, both chemists themselves, tackle the ethical issues surrounding priority and discovery, and the question of what it really means to be a scientist.
There is a series of pre-performance talks to accompany the play - details can be found on www.topquarkproductions.org.uk.
- March 2003
Copenhagen. 1941. A meeting between a man working for the German Government and his old friend who just happens to be half-Jewish. Complicated enough, but what if the men are Werner Heisenberg, head of the Nazi atomic fission program, and Niels Bohr, his former mentor and supervisor living in occupied Denmark? Then the very course of history lies in the balance.
Michael Frayn's play examines the consequences - both real and potential - of this critical meeting. After the war, neither could agree what had occurred, or even why the meeting had happened at all. They reunite on the stage for one more attempt at understanding. In the hands of a master playwright, the physics they created, with the principle of uncertainty at its heart, is a powerful metaphor for what happens when human beings are placed under the extreme pressures of war.
