FOLLOWING the retirement of founders Prof Colin Webb (Oxford University) and his wife Margaret, Café Scientifique Launceston is now run by a committee.

Brenda and Mike Hooton, who have been involved since the beginning, are co-chairmen and Cherry Warne is treasurer and publicist.

Responsible for finding the speakers are Prof Fenella Wojnarowska (Oxford) retired clinical dermatologist, and Prof Mike Moore, marine biologist, (Universities of Plymouth, Exeter and Piedmont, Italy).

Along with Cherry, Maureen Amy meets and greets, and Rob King is in charge of the audiovisual equipment — all organisers giving their time on a voluntary basis.

The success of the café has been primarily due to the high quality of speakers, including Prof Frank Close (Oxford), the eminent scientific author who spoke about ‘The Infinity Puzzle’ — the search for the Higgs Boson. On his second visit Prof Close spoke about the notorious physicist and spy Dr Bruno Portecorvo.

Other eminent speakers have included Prof Mike Edmunds (Cardiff University) who spoke about the Antikythera Mechanism, a mechanical computer thought to date from 100BC; and Prof John Burland (Imperial College London) on how he stopped the Tower of Pisa leaning any further — just to name a few of the 49 speakers to date.

A special meeting will be held on July 18, at which students from Launceston College will give presentations on scientific topics for which prizes will be awarded.

Monthly meetings (except August, December, January and February) are held on the third Tuesday at 7pm, at Jericho’s Kitchen, Northgate Street, Launceston.

There will be question and answer session. Admission is free but donations are welcome to cover the cost of room and speaker expenses.

The next meeting will be on June 20, when the speaker will be Prof Irene Leigh, from the University of Dundee who will speak about correcting genes.

To find out more about Café Scientifique visit the website www.cafescilaunceston.org