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National Museum Cardiff will host the second in a series of four Reith Lectures on Thursday 13 May, to be broadcast on ´óÏó´«Ã½ Radio 4 and ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service.

Martin Rees – President of the Royal Society, Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge – will deliver his thoughts on Surviving the Century, as part of the series on Scientific Horizons.

Martin Rees will take to the stage at the Museum's Reardon Smith Lecture Theatre and explore how we might save our planet in the face of increasing threats.

He assesses population explosion, food shortages and climate change and looks at possible solutions like clean energy. Will we be successful? Martin says he's a techno-optimist but there are reasons for pessimism.

In this series of prestigious lectures, he will consider scenarios, some optimistic, some less so, for a world in which pressures on resources and the environment will become ever more acute.

Described by Radio 4 Controller Mark Damazer as "a thrilling voyage of discovery", the lecture will be recorded for broadcast on Radio 4 on Tuesday 8 June at 9am, and the ´óÏó´«Ã½ World Service on Saturday 12 June at 18:00hrs.

´óÏó´«Ã½ Cymru Wales Director Menna Richards said: "Professor Rees is recognised around the world for his inspiring approach to science and its role in contemporary life and we are very pleased to welcome him to Wales for what promises to be a thoroughly thought-provoking lecture."

Admission is by ticket only and the event is now fully booked.

Notes to Editors

The Reith Lectures 2010 series will be broadcast on Tuesdays at 9am on Radio 4 from 1 June and on Saturdays at 18:00hrs on the World Service.

John Reith, the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s first Director-General, maintained that broadcasting should be a public service which enriches the intellectual and cultural life of the nation.

It is in this spirit that the ´óÏó´«Ã½ each year invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest.

The Reith Lectures began in 1948.

The very first Reith lecturer was the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who spoke on Authority And The Individual.

Martin Rees is the author of:
Cosmic Coincidences: Dark Matter, Mankind, And Anthropic Cosmology (co-author John Gribbin), 1989, Bantam
New Perspectives In Astrophysical Cosmology, 1995
Gravity's Fatal Attraction: Black Holes In The Universe, 1995 (a new edition is published in January 2010)
Before The Beginning – Our Universe And Others, 1997
Just Six Numbers: The Deep Forces That Shape The Universe, 2000
Our Cosmic Habitat, 2001
Our Final Century: Will The Human Race Survive The Twenty-first Century? 2003

Martin Rees has won many international awards for his research, and is an honorary member of the Royal Academy of Engineering, the US National Academy of Sciences, the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Indian Academy of Sciences and TWAS.

He is currently on the Board of Trustees of the Science Museum, the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Gates Cambridge Trust and the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, and has served on many bodies connected with education, space research, arms control and international collaboration in science.

KSD/VW