Physicist, writer and BBC broadcaster Prof. Helen Czerski will join the College Master Prof. Sharon Peacock for the next Master’s Book Club event, discussing Helen’s award-winning book, The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works. Helen is an alumna and Honorary Fellow of Churchill College, and her visit is a wonderful opportunity to hear from one of the most engaging voices in science communication today.
Well known for her BBC television and radio work alongside her academic research into waves, bubbles, and the ocean’s influence on the Earth’s climate system, Helen brings clarity and enthusiasm to one of the most complex and consequential systems on Earth. She is Professor of the Environment and Society at University College London.
Helen’s book arrived at a moment when the ocean is rarely out of the headlines. Fears over the collapse of Atlantic circulation, marine heatwaves, plastic pollution and growing proposals to exploit the deep sea for carbon removal or new Arctic shipping routes all compete for attention. Yet Helen argues that public debate consistently misses something fundamental. We hear endlessly about what is going wrong, but far less about what the ocean actually is. Without understanding its basic nature, its currents, structures and internal processes, she believes we cannot make sense of the news, let alone make good decisions about the future.
At the heart of the book is a striking central idea: that the global ocean is an intricate liquid engine whose workings shape almost everything about how our planet functions. As she explains, “even if you never see the sea, your world has been shaped by the way the ocean engine turns.” The second half of the book follows what she calls the Messengers, Passengers and Voyagers, the categories that matter, energy and life can fall into as they travel through this engine. Along the way, readers are taken from Ancient Rome to Hawaiian canoes, from singing fish to the largest waterfall on Earth, which lies hidden entirely beneath the ocean surface.
Helen hopes attendees will leave feeling that the ocean is something wonderful and worth understanding more deeply. “It’s still beautiful and interesting,” she says, “and we should be able to appreciate all of that, while still acting to look after it better in the future.”
The event takes place on Thursday 18 June, 6–7pm in Wolfson Hall, Churchill College, followed by drinks in the Buttery. It is free and open to all, but advance booking is essential. To secure your place, please visit: Book your ticket – The Master’s Book Club – Churchill College, University of Cambridge
Find out more about Helen’s book: The Blue Machine: How the Ocean Works
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