Discoveries abound at inaugural days

By Carol Pope

Tobacco craving does not depend on the amount you smoke. There is no agreed code of criminal law to which you can refer in Scotland. If printed out in font this size, the human genome would cover a pile of A4 paper as high as the Wellcome Trust Biocentre. Fifty per cent of our annual dose of radiation is received through breathing. Education and information barely change people’s behaviour. The real effectors of change are tax and legislation. Across Europe’s leading companies only 5.8% of directors are women. A scary percentage of "special care" babies cannot control their glucose levels between feeds on their day of discharge from hospital and risk subsequent damage. Kees Weijer may "work in slime" but has a stunning way of showing the primal streak magically transform to the chick’s spinal cord in moving images.

These were among the many discoveries the audience made at the first of the Discovery Days 2004 to inaugurate almost 40 professors appointed over the last three years. We also discovered that mouth cancer has doubled over the last 20 years and that dentists have a great line in gut wrenching slides.

An ambitious programme rich in topics reaching across a mind-stretching range of disciplines never missed a beat throughout the day, captivating the audience who included staff, students, alumni, senior pupils, Court members, ambassadors from partner institutions, friends and representatives of organisations and businesses.

Chancellor Sir James Black confessed to being "dazzled" by the talent on show and referred to the day as "a tremendous testimony to what universities are all about". He compared the intellectual excitement of the day to "firing arrows into the blue and pursuing them - who knows where". "A day like this defines in a complete way, a university," he said.

The importance of getting together with colleagues from other disciplines as a catalyst for new ideas was underlined by Principal Sir Alan Langlands who paid tribute to the 37 professors at a special dinner in their honour.

A volume bringing together all 37 Discovery Day lectures will be published later this year.

Matthew Jarron, with a chair designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh in 1904 for the Willow Tea Rooms in Glasgow.