Death on Earth: adventures in evolution and mortality

Death is an important subject in biology.  After all, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace independently arrived at the concept of natural selection by contemplating death.  After reading Thomas Malthus’s notorious Essay on Population, they realised that, unchecked by death, the ability of living things to reproduce would quickly result in astronomical numbers of every Read More

The Invention of Nature (Winner of the 2015 Costa Biography Award)

In her grand work, The Invention of Nature, Andrea Wulf sets out to restore Alexander von Humboldt (b. 1769) to his rightful place in the pantheon of scientific greats.  By introducing  the worldview that “nature is a living whole”, a “web of life”, and that man – through deforestation, farming and industrial practices – was Read More