Magnetism and the Brain: Pollution, particles and Alzheimer’s disease
Barbara Maher’s major research interests are in environmental magnetism and palaeomagnetism. She uses magnetic methods to obtain palaeoclimatic, palaeoenvironmental and dating information from the magnetic records of Quaternary terrestrial sediments, deep-sea sediments, and pre-Quaternary rocks. She studies sources of particulate pollutants in the environment and led the international Working Group on Dust and Climate. Barbara led the team which recently discovered the abundant presence of externally-derived magnetite, and co-associated metal-bearing air pollution particles in the human brain, identifying for the first time a possible causal role for these particles in neurodegenerative disease, including Alzheimer’s disease.
224th Lecture Series Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow
Date: Wednesday 29 October 2025
Time: 19:30 - 21:00
Venue: Charles Wilson Building, Lecture Theatre 201
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Professor Barbara Maher
Professor Barbara Maher is Professor Emerita and formerly the director of the Centre for Environmental Magnetism and Palaeomagnetism at Lancaster University. Prof Maher was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2024. Amongst other recent prizes, awards and distinctions, Barbara was the Edward Bullard Lecturer at the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in 2021. (AGU Named Lectures are awarded to distinguished scientists with proven leadership and discoveries in their fields). She was awarded Fellowship of the America Geophysical Union in 2020. In 2014, she received the Schlumberger Award (now the Neumann Medal), the most prestigious honour bestowed by the Mineralogical Society of Gt Britain & Ireland, for scientific excellence in mineralogy and its applications, and the Chree Medal and Prize (2005) by the Institute of Physics the for ‘pioneering contributions to the study of magnetic signals from the geological record as a means of determining climatic changes’.