The Sir Robert Rede's Lecturer is an annual appointment to give a public lecture, the Sir Robert Rede's Lecture (usually Rede Lecture) at the University of Cambridge. It is named for Sir Robert Rede, who was Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in the sixteenth century.
The initial series of lectures ranges from around 1668 to around 1856. In principle, there were three lectureships each year, on Logic, Philosophy and Rhetoric. These differed from the later individual lectures, in that they were appointments to a lectureship for a period of time, rather than an appointment for a one-off annual lecture. There was also a Mathematics lectureship which dated from an earlier time, while another term used was "Barnaby Lecturer", as the lecturers were elected on St Barnabas Day. A selection of the lecturers, who tended to have studied at Cambridge and be appointed after becoming Fellows of a College, is given below, with a full listing given in the sources.
From 1858, the lecture was re-established as a one-off annual lecture, delivered by a person appointed by the Vice-Chancellor of the university. The names of the appointees and the titles of their lectures are given below.
1859 Richard Owen On the classifaction and geographical distribution of the Mammalia1860 John Phillips Life on the earth, its origin and succession1861 Robert Willis The social and architectural history of Trinity College1862 Edward Sabine The cosmical features of terrestrial magnetism1863 David Thomas Ansted The correlation of the natural history sciences1864 George Biddell Airy The late observations of total eclipses of the sun, and the inferences from them1865 John Tyndall On Radiation1866 William Thomson The dissipation of energy1867 John Ruskin The relation of national ethics to national art1868 Friedrich Max Müller On the stratification of language1869 William Huggins On the results of spectrum analysis of the heavenly bodies1870 William Allen Miller On some chemical processes of forming organic compounds, with illustrations from the coal tar colours1871 Joseph Norman Lockyer Recent solar discoveries1872 Edward Augustus Freeman The Unity of History1873 Peter Guthrie Tait Thermo-electricity1874 Samuel White Baker Slavery1875 Henry James Sumner Maine The effects of observation of India upon modern European thought1876 Samuel Birch The monumental history of ancient Egypt1877 Charles Wyville Thomson On some of the results of the expedition of H.M.S. Challenger1878 James Clerk Maxwell On the telephone1879 William Henry Dallinger 'The origin of life, illustrated by the life histories of the least and lowest organisms in nature'1880 George Murray Humphry 'Man, prehistoric, present, future'1881 William Muir The early Caliphate1882 Matthew Arnold Literature and Science1883 Thomas Henry Huxley 'The origin of the existing forms of animal life: construction or evolution?1884 Francis Galton The Measurement of Human Faculty1885 George John Romanes Mind and motion1886 John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury On the forms of seedlings and the causes to which they are due1887 John Robert Seeley Greater Britain in the Georgian and in the Victorian era1888 Frederick Augustus Abel Applications of science to the protection of human life1889 George Gabriel Stokes On some effects of the action of light on ponderable matter1890 Richard Claverhouse Jebb Erasmus1891 Alfred Comyn Lyall Natural religion in India1892 Thomas George Bonney The microscope's contributions to the earth's physical history1893 Michael Foster Weariness1894 John Willis Clark Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods1895 Mandell Creighton The Early Renaissance in England1896 J. J. Thomson Röntgen rays1897 Arthur William Rücker Recent researches on terrestrial magnetism1898 Henry Irving The theatre in its relation to the state1899 Marie Alfred Cornu La théorie des ondes lumineuses: son influence sur la physique moderne1900 Frederic Harrison Byzantine history in the early middle age1901 Frederic William Maitland English Law and the Renaissance1902 Osborne Reynolds On an inversion of ideas as to the structure of the Universe1903 George Walter Prothero Napoleon III and the Second Empire1904 James Alfred Ewing The structure of metals1905 Francis Edward Younghusband Our true relationship with India1906 William Mitchell Ramsay The wars between Moslem and Christian for the possession of Asia Minor1907 Aston Webb The art of architecture, and the training required to practise it1908 Ernest Mason Satow An Austrian diplomatist in the fifties1909 Archibald Geikie Charles Darwin as Geologist1910 Charles Harding Firth The parallel between the English and American Civil Wars1911 Charles Algernon Parsons The Steam Turbine1912 George Gilbert Aimé Murray The chorus in Greek tragedy1913 George Nathaniel Curzon Modern Parliamentary Eloquence1914 Norman Moore St Bartholomew's Hospital in peace and war1915 Frederic George Kenyon Ideals and characteristics of English culture1916 George Forrest Browne The ancient cross-shafts of Bewcastle and Ruthwell1917 Richard Tetley Glazebrook Science and industry1918 Louis Alexander Mountbatten, 1st Marquess of Milford Haven The Royal Navy, 1815-19151919 Lord Moulton, Science and War1920 James Scorgie Meston, 1st Baron Meston India at the crossways1921 William Napier Shaw The air and its ways1922 William Ralph Inge The Victorian Age1923 Hendrick Antoon Lorentz Clerk Maxwell's electromagnetic theory1924 Herbert Hensley Henson Byron1925 Hugh Walpole Some notes on the evolution of the English novel1926 Arthur Mayger Hind Claude Lorrain and modern art1927 Josiah Stamp On stimulus in the economic life1928 Michael Ernest Sadler Thomas Day: an English disciple of Rousseau1929 John Buchan The Causal and the Casual in History1930 James Hopwood Jeans The mysterious universe, resulting in the book The Mysterious Universe1931 George Stuart Gordon Robert Bridges1932 Edgar Allison Peers St. John of the Cross1933 Charles Scott Sherrington Brain and its mechanism1934 Hugh Pattison Macmillan Two ways of thinking1935 Alfred Daniel Hall The pace of progress1936 Cedric Webster Hardwicke The drama to-morrow1937 Harold George Nicolson The Meaning Of Prestige1938 Patrick Playfair Laidlaw Virus diseases and viruses1939 Edward Mellanby Some social and economic implications of the recent advances in medical science1940 Augustus Moore Daniel Some approaches to judgment in painting1941 E. M. Forster Virginia Woolf1942 Archibald MacLeish American opinion of the war1943 Max Beerbohm Lytton Strachey's writings1944 Richard Winn Livingstone Plato and modern education1945 Norman Birkett National Parks and the countryside1946 Edward Victor Appleton Terrestrial magnetism and the ionosphere1947 Hubert Douglas Henderson The uses and abuses of economic planning1948 Walter Hamilton Moberly Universities and the state1949 Ernest William Barnes Religion and turmoil1950 Edward Bridges Portrait of a Profession1951 Cecil Maurice Bowra Inspiration and poetry1952 Walter Russell Brain The Contribution of Medicine to our Idea of the Mind1953 Arthur Duncan Gardner The proper study of mankind1954 Charles Alfred Coulson Science and religion: a changing relationship1955 Lord David Cecil Walter Pater - the Scholar Artist1956 John Betjeman The English Town in the Last Hundred Years1957 Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer Matthew Prior1958 Charles Galton Darwin The problems of world population1959 C. P. Snow The Two Cultures1960 Edgar Wind Classicism1961 Lord Radcliffe Censors1962 Robert Hall Planning1963 Douglas William Logan The Years of Challenge1964 Kenneth Hurlstone Jackson The oldest Irish tradition - a window on the early Iron Age1965 Gavin de Beer Genetics and prehistory1966 Harold McCarter Taylor Why should we study the Anglo-Saxons?1967 Kenneth Wheare The university in the news1968 Patrick Arthur Devlin, Lord Devlin The House of Lords and the Naval Prize Bill 19111969 Patrick Maynard Stuart Blackett The gap widens1970 Kenneth Clark The artist grows old1971 Herbert Butterfield The discontinuities between the generations in History: their effect on the transmission of political experience1972 None1973 Kingsley Dunham Non-renewable resources - a dilemma1974 Walter Laing Macdonald Perry Higher education for adults: where more means better1975 Alfred Alistair Cooke The American in England: from Emerson to S. J. Perelman1976 Rupert Cross The golden thread of English Criminal Law: the burden of proof1977 Richard Southern The historical experience1978 Margaret Gowing Reflections on Atomic Energy History1979 HRH The Duke of Edinburgh Philosophy, politics and administration1980 Shirley Williams Technology, employment, and change1981 Frederick Sydney Dainton British universities: purposes, problems, and pressures1982 Fred Hoyle Facts and Dogmas in Cosmology and Elsewhere1983 David Towry Piper The increase of learning and other great objects1984 Sir Clive Sinclair A time for change1985 Brian Urquhart The United Nations and international law1986 David Attenborough Islands1987 Sir John Thompson A reconsideration of the ideas underlying the international system1988 Roy Jenkins Lord Jenkins of Hillhead; 'An Oxford view of Cambridge'1989 Peter Alexander Ustinov Communication1990 HRH The Princess Royal Punishment1991 Peter Swinnerton-Dyer Policy on Higher Education and Research1993 L. M. Singhvi A Tale of Three Cities1994 Geoffrey Howe Nationalism and the Nation State1996 Mary Robinson1997 Leon Brittan Globalisation vs. Sovereignty? The European Response1998 Rosalyn Higgins International Law in a Changing Legal System2009 Wen Jiabao See China in the Light of Her Development2010 Onora O'Neill The Two Cultures Fifty Years On2011 Harold Varmus The Purpose and Conduct of Science2015 Drew Gilpin Faust Two Wars and the Long Twentieth Century: the United States, 1861–65; Britain 1914–18