Darwin - Life and Legacy by Eoin Gill

Eoin Gill filled in for Peter Bowler at the ISTA Conference. Eoin is coordinator of Darwin 200 Ireland.
He spoke about the life of Charles Darwin and the influences in his early life, in particular his possible exposure to ideas surrounding evolution. He described the Beagle Voyage and subsequent researches and writing. The careful formulation of the theory of evolution by means of natural selection and the events preceeding and following publication of Origin of Species. There was a discussion about the acceptance of the theory then and now and this was followed by a description of Darwin 200 activities in Ireland and activities such as the Wellcome Trust programmes for UK schools and the Evolution Megalab that can be done in Irish schools.

The Evolution Megalab is an exciting "citizen project" running throughout Europe. Coordinated by the Open University the project seeks to get people out observing and recording the banded snail (Cepea Nemoralis). Observers log onto the website to record their observations, which will be part of a real research project with experts from around Europe.

www.evolutionmegalab.org 

Eoin Gill is Chair of iSCAN the Irish Science Centres Awareness Network. He works full time in science awareness through Calmast (Centre for the Advancement of Learning of Maths, Science and Technology) at Waterford IT with Sheila Donegan. Eoin and Sheila recieved a Descartes Award for Science Communication from the EU in 2006.