Lawrence Krauss to deliver Darwin Day Lecture 2017 in London

23 September, 2016

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2017 Darwin Day Lecturer: Lawrence Krauss

Internationally renowned theoretical physicist Professor Lawrence Krauss will deliver the Darwin Day Lecture 2017 in London on Friday 10 February.

Each February, people around the world come together for Darwin Day, a celebration of the life of Charles Darwin and his enormously influential discovery of evolution by natural selection. The British Humanist Association (BHA) has organised a Darwin Day Lecture in London each year since 2003. It is the largest event of its kind in Britain, with over 1,000 people registering to attend the sold-out lectures in each year.

Professor Lawrence Krauss, Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department at Arizona State University, and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project will speak on ‘Cosmic natural selection’.

Darwin changed biology forever by demonstrating that what seemed obvious on the surface, namely design, was in fact an illusion, and that at a more fundamental level natural selection governed the evolution of life.  Over the 20th century, physics has demonstrated that the world of our experience is also in some sense illusory. The story of science’s effort to uncover these hidden realities involves the greatest intellectual journey ever taken by humans, from Plato through Einstein and beyond.  A tale ripe with drama and surprise, it has implications for our our understanding of space and time, our origins, and our future, and ultimately addresses that fundamental question: Why are we here?

Commenting on the announcement, BHA Chief Executive Andrew Copson said, ‘We are delighted to be hosting Lawrence Krauss to deliver the Darwin Day Lecture 2017 in London.  With each year the Darwin Lecture goes on, the venues get larger and still the tickets sell out faster. Anyone looking to hear from one of the greatest science communicators of our time should look to book their seats as quickly as possible.’

Tickets cost £15 for the general public, £13 for BHA members, and £10 for students. You can get yours at humanists.uk/DarwinDay2017.

Notes

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The British Humanist Association (BHA) is the national charity working on behalf of non-religious people who seek to live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity.

The Darwin Day Lecture, held each February as part of the British Humanist Association’s annual lecture series, explores Humanism and humanist thought, especially that related to science and evolution, Charles Darwin, and his works. It takes place every year on or around 12 February, coinciding with Darwin Day, the annual global celebration of the birth of Charles Darwin. In 2017 the BHA will host the largest Darwin Day Lecture to date.

Lawrence M. Krauss is an internationally-renowned theoretical physicist with wide research interests, which include the early universe, the nature of dark matter, general relativity, and neutrino astrophysics. He has investigated questions ranging from the nature of exploding stars to issues of the origin of all mass in the universe.  He is currently Foundation Professor in the School of Earth and Space Exploration and Physics Department at Arizona State University, and Inaugural Director of the Origins Project, a national centre for research and outreach on origins issues, from the origins of the universe, to human origins, to the origins of consciousness and culture. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982, and is the only physicist to have received awards from all three national US physics societies.

Krauss is the author of over 300 scientific publications, as well as numerous popular articles on physics and astronomy. He is the author of ten popular books, including the international bestseller The Physics of Star Trek (1995) and most recently A Universe from Nothing (2012), which immediately became a New York Times Bestseller and has now been translated into 24 different languages. It argues that not only can our universe naturally arise from nothing, without supernatural effects, but that it probably did. His newest book, The Greatest Story Ever Told… So Far, will appear in March 2017.