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Grand Canyon
The Grand Canyon: natural wonder of the world. I’ve been there a few times now and the sight of it never fails to stop me. Stop me dead in my tracks, overcome by its immeasurable size and layered, many-coloured, beauty. It seems to me that I even stop breathing because there is simply no breath left for the expletives of awe and joy that fill me but, uncharacteristically, never leave my body. Previously, however, I had never walked down into the canyon, and it was this that was the object of my being there two weeks ago. To look at the Grand Canyon is not just to see the world’s…
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Time to Stand Up
Where to start? I’m 63. I have a title: the Stuart Professor of Science Communication. But what does it all mean? I started my professional life as a scientist, as wedded to the notion of a testable hypothesis as any human can be. Earlier, as a boy, I had been drawn to science by some of the 20th Century’s greatest popularisers of science: David Attenborough, Jacques Cousteau, Gerald Durrell, Desmond Morris, Carl Sagan and Rachel Carson. I’ve always appreciated the schism that exists between the doing and the telling. If in my head I was a scientist, in my heart I leant towards science communication. Now, I find myself as…
