Robert Edmond Grant Memorial Lecture – speakers 1997-2017

The annual Robert Edmond Grant Memorial Lecture has been held in honour of Professor Robert Edmond Grant (born 11 November 1793 in Edinburgh; died 23 August 1874 at home, 2 Euston Grove, more). Grant was a zoologist, an expert on comparative anatomy, an evolutionist, and a political radical.

This annual lecture was organised by UCL Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy and UCL Department of Genetics, Evolution, and Environment (GEE), with support from several UCL units, sometimes with UCL Department of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Normally these lectures are held in November, celebrating Grant’s birthday. (Number 16 was delivered in March.) The series was initiated by Professor Helen Chatterjee in 1997 to mark the relaunch of UCL Grant Museum of Zoology and Comparative Anatomy.

Very sadly, since 2017, the Grant Lectures have been in abeyance owing to a downgrading of ambitions for the museum.

List of Speakers of Robert Edmond Grant Memorial Lectures (1997-2017)

number	year	lecturer and title
21	2017	Kate Jones Our planet; our health
20	2016	Georgina Mace Nature for Us?
19	2015	Helen Chatterjee Adventures in Gibbon-ology
18	2014	Anjali Goswani Why aren’t there any marsupial whales?
17	2013 (Nov)	Paul Upchurch Fossils, climate change and the future of life on Earth
16	2013 (Feb)	Joe Cain Darwin in London
15	2011	Roger Wooton Zoology and mythology: looking at angels, fairies and dragons
14	2010	Steve Jones Soft but not floppy; the art of science and the science of art
13	2009	James Moore Darwin’s Progress And The Problem Of Slavery
12	2008	Hugh Torrens Mary Anning: The greatest fossilist the world ever knew
11	2007	John van Wyhe Rediscovering Darwin: The real story of Darwin’s finches
10	2006	Marek Kohn “Then at once I seemed to see the whole effect of this…” Imagining the power of natural selection
09	2005	Michael Ruse Darwin or Design? Reporting from the front lines of America’s struggle over evolution
08	2004	Pietro Corsi Not alone, not the first: Lamarck and the first debate on the history of life, 1780-1802
07	2003	Joe Cain Underneath the Scopes Trial: Why so many Americans hate evolution
06	2002	Janet Browne Darwin as Caricature
05	2001	Peter Bowler [Science and Religion]
04	2000	Martin Rudwick Georges Cuvier’s paper museum of fossil bones
03	1999	Brian Gardiner [title lost]
02	1998	Adrian Desmond The Radical Evolutionist Robert Grant: The Trials of Darwin’s Teacher
01	1997	Stephen Jay Gould [title lost]