Eugenie C. Scott

Distinguished Lecturers

"Why the Fuss about Darwin and Evolution?"
Eugenie C. Scott

Wednesday, September 8, 2010
Walb Student Union Ballroom
7:00 p.m.

Host Department: Geosciences
Sponsored in part by the Addison Locke Roache Memorial Lecture Fund

Biography

Eugenie C. Scott is a former university professor and the executive director of the National Center for Science Education, “a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents and concerned citizens working to keep evolution in public school science education.” She has been both a researcher and an activist in the creationism/evolution controversy for more than 25 years, and has addressed many components of this controversy including educational, legal, scientific, religious, and social issues.

She has received national recognition for her NCSE activities, including awards from scientific societies, educational societies, skeptics groups, and humanist groups. Among her most notable recent honors: the Public Service Medal (National Academy of Sciences), the Fellows Medal (California Academy of Sciences), the first Stephen Jay Gould Prize (Society for the Study of Evolution), and inclusion in the Scientific American 10 (which also includes Barack Obama and Bill Gates.)

Scott is often a guest on radio programs such as All Things Considered (PBS), Reasons to Believe (Christian cable), The Science Show (Australian Broadcasting Corporation), Culture Shock (Air America), and Heart and Soul (BBC). She also has contributed to broadcast and cable media shows including the BBC, multiple US broadcast and cable news channels, Evolution (PBS, NOVA), In the Beginning (PBS, NOVA), Reasons to Believe (Christian cable), Hour Magazine, Donahue, and Ancient Mysteries (A&E).

Scott holds eight honorary degrees from the University of Missouri, Colorado College, McGill University (Canada), Rutgers University, Mt. Holyoke College, the University of New Mexico, Ohio State University, and the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. Scott is the author of Evolution vs.Creationism and co-editor, with Glenn Branch, of Not in Our Classrooms: Why Intelligent Design Is Wrong for Our Schools.

Charles Darwin proposed 150 years ago that living things have descended with modification from common ancestors by the process of natural selection. This is the key to understanding virtually every area in biology from biochemistry to cell biology to organismic biology to population biology to ecology. Evolution is the glue that holds biology together as a coherent science, making, in the words of a famous scientist, a “meaningful picture as a whole.” Nonetheless, the teaching of evolution is a contentious issue in the United States today, for reasons that touch upon religion, science, history, and inevitably politics. Eugenie C. Scott, authority on evolution and the creationism/evolution controversy, will help to clear the air about this publicly, if not scientifically, controversial topic of evolution.