University of Chicago professor and outspoken defender of evolution Jerry A. Coyne will discuss his book, Why Evolution is True, a passionate defense of natural selection as theory and fact.  In his book, Coyne presents, as Publishers’ Weekly states, a case that “evolutionary theory makes predictions that are consistently borne out by the data—basic requirements for a scientific theory to be valid.” Join us for a lively discussion of science and culture.

Monday, February 8, 2010        6:30pm
Columbia College of Chicago, Ferguson Auditorium, 600 S. Michigan Av., Rm 101

For more information about Columbia College Chicago’s Critical Encounters initiative, visit here.

Jerry A. Coyne, PhD is a Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago and a member of both the Committee on Genetics and the Committee on Evolutionary Biology.  Coyne received a BS in Biology from the College of William and Mary.  He then earned a PhD in evolutionary biology at Harvard University in 1978, working in the laboratory of Richard Lewontin.  After a postdoctoral fellowship in Timothy Prout’s laboratory at The University of California at Davis, he took his first academic position as assistant professor in the Department of Zoology at The University of Maryland.  In 1996 he joined the faculty of The University of Chicago.

Fermilab Lecture Series Presents Dr. James Shapiro on “Evolution in the 21st Century”

Ideas about evolution were first formulated before biology and genetics developed into the sophisticated sciences they are today. Molecular biology has had a profound impact on our understanding of how organisms are related to each other and how they change over time. Genome sequencing reveals the evolutionary record as it remains in the DNA of living organisms and constitutes a test of theories about how evolution has occurred. Discoveries about the molecular and cellular nature of evolutionary changes show that this remains a vital and exciting area of science with many new theoretical and experimental possibilities. In particular, genome sequences teach us that many key events in evolution have been accompanied by major and rapid changes in the content and organization of cell DNA that affected numerous characters at the same time. These kinds of changes were unknowable to the pioneers of evolutionary thinking and have not yet been included in conventional statements about how the evolutionary process operates. Incorporating lessons from the DNA record, recent observations of evolution in action, and experiments about the biological processes of genome change make it possible to formulate a 21st Century view that is consistent with other developments in the molecular life sciences.

Date/Time: Friday, January 22, 2010     8:00pm

Location: Fermilab’s Ramsey Auditorium, Batavia, IL

Tickets: $7.00   To reserve tickets, call 630-840-2787.  Visit here for details.

James Shapiro is a Chicago native who grew up in South Shore. He studied English Literature at Harvard College and won a Marshall Scholarship to Cambridge University in England. At Cambridge he completed a PhD in Genetics and then did postdoctoral fellowships at the Institut Pasteur in Paris, France, and Harvard Medical School. He has taught at the Universities of Chicago (he has been on the faculty for 36 years), Havana, Tel Aviv, and Edinburgh, where he was the Darwin Prize Professor in 1993. Prof. Shapiro’s scholarly work has centered on bacterial genetics. His major research accomplishments are the discovery of transposable elements in bacteria, the first purification of a genetically defined DNA segment from a living organism, formulating a realistic and detailed molecular mechanism for the transposition of DNA in bacteria, showing that the action of transposable elements is triggered by nutritional stress, and demonstrating that bacterial colonies represent an organized and differentiated form of multicellular life. For the past 17 years, he has articulated the view that genomic change in evolution occurs by a complex but non-random process of “natural genetic engineering.”

Title: David Qaummen Discusses Darwin
Location: Northwestern University, Tech Institute, 2145 Sheridan Road, Evanston
Link out: Click here
Description: One Book One Northwestern Keynote Address: “Darwin Against Himself: Caution versus Honesty in the Life of a Reluctant Revolutionary” David Quammen, Ph.D. Wallace Stegner Chair in Western American Studies Department of History and Philosophy Montana State University Using as background the portrait of Darwin in “The Reluctant Mr. Darwin,” this lecture will explore the way these two character traits–his tendency toward caution and his extraordinary intellectual honesty–balanced against each other to affect the way he lived his professional (and personal) life, the way he conceived and developed his evolutionary theory, and the peculiar 21-year delay that intervened before he published that theory in “The Origin of Species.” This portrait of Darwin makes him vivid and knowable as a very human person, not just a towering scientist.
Start Time: 7:00
Date: 2009-02-05
End Time: 8:30