Christmas Lectures

We have now finished filming the 2007 Christmas Lectures, Back from the brink: the science of survival, starring Dr Hugh Montgomery a diver, skydiver, high-altitude mountaineer, intensive care doctor, genetics researcher and director of the UCL Institute for Human Health and Performance.

If you missed the lectures or if you were in the audience and want to see if you made it onto the television, you can watch all five of the lectures beginning on Christmas Eve at 7.15pm on Channel Five, continuing each evening at the same time until 28 December.

Here's a reminder of what this year's lectures were all about:

Who lives, who dies and why?

Honed over 4 billion years of evolution, the human body is an extraordinary and complex machine. We must find fuel and fluids, balance their intake with needs and with loss, create an internal currency of energy, and spend it performing a whole range of tasks. It is amazing that we even survive a Christmas dinner.

Yet what happens when these systems are pushed to their absolute limit? The human body can cope with remarkable extremes of temperature, from desert to Arctic conditions. It can also endure long periods of starvation and thirst – as any survivor cast adrift at sea will testify. We can tolerate intense pain and put up with unimaginable hardships, as some of the toughest commandoes fleeing an enemy over hundreds of miles will recall. The capacity of the body to recover from the most devastating trauma is impressive and the power of the survival instinct never ceases to surprise.

But are we all survivors? Or are they special? And, if so, are they born or made?

DVD

A DVD of this year's Christmas Lectures will be available in the New Year. To pre-order your copy click here.

About the Ri Christmas Lectures

In the mid 1820s Michael Faraday, a former director of the Royal Institution, initiated the first Christmas Lecture series at a time when organised education for young people was scarce. He presented a total of 19 series, establishing an exciting new venture of teaching science to young people.

The Christmas Lectures have continued annually since this time, stopping only during World War 2. They are recognised as an educational forum for presenting complex scientific issues to young people in an informative and entertaining manner and are the flagship of the Royal Institution. Many world-famous scientists have given the lectures including Baroness Susan Greenfield, the current Director of the Royal Institution, David Attenborough and George Porter. To find out all of the Christmas Lecture speakers since 1825, please click here.

We are very grateful to the Wellcome Trust, who part-sponsored the 2007 Christmas Lectures. The Wellcome Trust is an independent charity funding research to improve human and animal health. Established in 1936 from the will of Sir Henry Wellcome with an endowment of around £13 billion, it is the UK's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research. As a privately endowed charity, it is independent from governments, industry and donors. Full details of the Trust's activities may be found on their website at: www.wellcome.ac.uk.

This is the third year that the Christmas Lectures will be broadcast on five over the Christmas period. Five and the Ri share a passion for exploiting the unique nature of the lectures and their intellectually challenging scientific experimental style. Five has a track record of uncompromising standards of scientific coverage, and a growing commitment to science as a key part of the channel’s peak-time schedule.