Is evolution over?
DR STEVE JONES, Professor of Genetics and Head of Department, University College, London
Date/Time: 11th November 2008, 17:30
HEAR A RECORDING OF THIS LECTURE
Many people are convinced that advances in medicine, global damage to DNA through pollution, and differential reproduction by people with inferior genes mean that the human race is in biological decline. Steve Jones will argue that the opposite is true: that - at least in the developed world, and at least for now - human evolution is, in effect, over.
Steve Jones was born in 1944 in Aberystwyth, Wales, and has degrees from the University of Edinburgh and University of Chicago. Much of his academic research has been concerned with snails and the light their anatomy can shed on biodiversity and genetics. He is professor of genetics at Galton laboratory of University College London, and has had visiting posts at Harvard University, the University of Chicago, the University of California at Davis, University of Botswana, Fourah Bay College in Sierra Leone, and Flinders University in Adelaide.
Steve Jones is probably best known to the general public as a regular broadcaster and writer of popular books on scientific issues. He gave the 1991 Reith Lectures on "The Language of the Genes" has written and presented a Radio 3 series on science and the arts, "Blue Skies", and a TV series on human genetics, "In the Blood". He also appears on other radio and TV programmes, such as Today, Question Time, Late Review and Newsnight, and has written a regular column in The Daily Telegraph, "View from the Lab". His books include Genetics for Beginners (Icon Books), The Language of the Genes (HarperCollins), In The Blood (HarperCollins), Almost like a Whale: The Origin of Species Updated (Anchor Books).