It's a pleasure to introduce the 162nd series
of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures
And, during this year,
since the last series, we have, in the Royal Institution, celebrated
the 200th birthday of, what I and many other people believe, to have been
the greatest experimental scientist who ever lived, Michael Faraday.
I think, it's also worth saying this afternoon
that, not only was he a great scientist,
but he was also the originator of these Christmas Lectures, started in 1826,
and which he himself gave no fewer than 19 times.
I thought I would read
what he said at the beginning of one of those series of lectures,
when he stood here, I believe it was in 1854.
He said the following:
"Let us consider, for a little while,
how wonderfully we stand upon the world.
Here it is that we are born, and bred, and live.
And yet, we view these things with an almost entire absence of wonder
to ourselves, respecting the way in which all this happens."
That was the reason for the Christmas Lectures in Faraday's mind -
it was to awaken wonder.
We are going to take up that theme again this year,
because Doctor Richard Dawkins, the Reader in Zoology from Oxford University,
is going to tell us how you and I - stand upon this world,
and how that all comes to happen.
Because, he's going to explain to us how living creatures -
many kinds of living creatures, including you and I -
have evolved on the surface of the earth.
We are very happy, to acknowledge the help preparing these lectures
from Shell UK & Shell International
who have given us valuable sponsorship,
I would also like to take the opportunity to say
that we are organising, again, a competition this year,
based on the content of the lectures,
so if you would like to participate in the competition,
you will find the address
to send your entries to displayed at the end of lecture.
Now, it only remains for me to introduce to you Doctor Richard Dawkins,
who is going to give the 1991 Christmas Lectures of the Royal Institution
on 'Waking Up In the Universe'.