The Paul Smales Lecture: Goonhilly – Space and Music

This year the Annual Paul Smales Lecture will be delivered by Ian Jones, the founder and CEO at Goonhilly Earth Station.

Ian explores the extraordinary world of space communications and music – how they are intertwined – and how music helps to explain some of the fundamental concepts of how things work – especially communication with space missions half a billion km away.

It is often said that maths and music go together. Buy why? Is it something to do with being good at counting? Or having a “mathematical mind”? And what does that mean anyway? 

With a background in both electronic circuit design and music Ian is the ideal person to unravel some of these mysteries and to reveal what is happening behind the security fence at Goonhilly – and what it has to do with space and music.

Ian Jones is the founder and CEO of Goonhilly Earth Station Ltd. He is an engineer, entrepreneur and musician. He is a graduate of Leeds University where he studied Electrical and Electronic Engineering before pursuing a career in the design and development of space communication systems

In the last 12 months, Goonhilly has supported ground-breaking missions including Artemis 1 – Nasa’s return to the Moon after 50 years. Their success has been a significant boost for Cornwall and has helped to propel the county on a global stage.

With co-founder, Piran Trezise, Ian is the 2023 winner of the Royal Polytechnic Society Medal in recognition of outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of Industry.

The Paul Smales lectures are given in memory of Paul Smales, who made a great contribution to many Cornish institutions and was a friend of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society for many years.

Tickets: £5/£8/£11 A £1 Poly Fund payment is added to each ticket sold

Some events at The Poly use a Flexible Ticket Pricing Scheme. We use this system to make our events as accessible as possible, you can decide what to pay according to your means, no questions asked. 

The different ticket prices do not indicate a difference in viewing experience, sound quality or mean you are sat in a different seating zone.