AMES, Iowa -- Sean Carroll, an award-winning scientist, author and educator who writes a monthly science column for The New York Times, will present "Remarkable Creatures: Epic Adventures in the Search for the Origin of Species" at 8 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 10 in the Memorial Union Great Hall at Iowa State University. The talk, part of the university's National Affairs Series, is free and open to the public.
Carroll is professor of molecular biology and genetics and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He researches the genes that control animal body patterns and play major roles in the evolution of animal diversity. Major discoveries from his laboratory have been featured in Time, U.S. News and World Report, Discover and Natural History.
He is the author of four books, including "Remarkable Creatures," which tells the stories of the most dramatic expeditions and important discoveries in two centuries of natural history and how they inspired and expanded one of the greatest ideas of modern science: evolution. The book was a finalist for the 2009 National Book Award, nonfiction.
Carroll's other books include "The Making of the Fittest," and "Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo." He is co-author of the textbooks "From DNA to Diversity: Molecular Genetics and the Evolution of Animal Design" and "Introduction to Genetic Analysis." Carroll's feature, "Remarkable Creatures," appears monthly in The New York Times' Science Times.
Featured on NPR's "Science Friday," Carroll recently helped produce a PBS "NOVA" special marking the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin's publication of "Origin of Species."
Carroll earned his bachelor's degree in biology at Washington University in St. Louis, and his doctoral degree in immunology at Tufts Medical School, Boston.
Carroll's lecture is cosponsored by the departments of Animal Science; Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology; Genetics, Development and Cell Biology; and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology; the bioethics program; biomedical sciences; the interdepartmental genetics graduate program; LAS Miller Funds; the National Affairs Series; and the Committee on Lectures, which is funded by the Government of the Student Body.
