The Princeton University evolutionary ecology husband and wife team, renowned for the work with Darwin's finches in the Galápagos archipelago, each discuss their recently released memoirs.
About the Books (from the publisher):
Enchanted by Daphne: The Life of an Evolutionary Naturalist is ecologist Peter Grant’s personal account of his remarkable life and career. In this revelatory book, Grant takes readers from his childhood in World War II–era Britain to his ongoing research today in the Galápagos archipelago, vividly describing what it’s like to do fieldwork in one of the most magnificent yet inhospitable places on Earth. This is also the story of two brilliant and courageous biologists raising a family together while balancing the demands of professional lives that would take them to the far corners of the globe.
In 1973, Grant and his wife, Rosemary, embarked on a journey that would fundamentally change how we think about evolution. Over the next four decades, they visited the Galápagos every year to observe Darwin’s famous finches on the remote, uninhabited island of Daphne Major. Documenting how eighteen species have diversified from a single ancestral species, they demonstrated that we could actually see and measure evolution in a natural setting. Grant recounts the blind alleys and breathtaking triumphs of this historic research as he and Rosemary followed in Darwin’s footsteps—and ushered in a new era in ecology.
A wonderfully absorbing portrait of a life in science, Enchanted by Daphne is an unforgettable chronicle of the travels and discoveries of one of the world’s most influential naturalists.
One Step Sideways, Three Steps Forward: One Woman’s Path to Becoming a Biologist recounts the story of scientist Rosemary Grant’s journey in life and its many detours and sidesteps—not the shortest or the straightest of paths, but one that has led her to the top of evolutionary biology. In this engaging and moving book, Grant tells the story of her life and career—from her childhood love of nature in England’s Lake District to an undergraduate education at the University of Edinburgh through a swerve to Canada and teaching, followed by marriage, children, a PhD at age forty-nine, and her life’s work with Darwin’s finches in the Galápagos islands. Grant’s unorthodox career is one woman’s solution to the problem of combining professional life as a field biologist with raising a family.
Grant describes her youthful interest in fossils, which inspired her to imagine another world, distant yet connected in time—and which anticipated her later work in evolutionary biology. She and her husband, Peter Grant, visited the Galápagos archipelago annually for forty years, tracking the fates of the finches on the small, uninhabited island of Daphne Major. Their work has profoundly altered our understanding of how a group of eighteen species has diversified from a single ancestral species, demonstrating that evolution by natural selection can be observed and interpreted in an entirely natural environment. Grant’s story shows the rewards of following a winding path and the joy of working closely with a partner, sharing ideas, disappointments, and successes.
About the Authors:
Peter R. Grant is the Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include "Ecology and Evolution of Darwin’s Finches" and (with B. Rosemary Grant) "40 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Finches on Daphne Major Island."
B. Rosemary Grant is research scholar emerita at Princeton University. She is the author (with Peter R. Grant) of "How and Why Species Multiply" and "40 Years of Evolution: Darwin’s Finches on Daphne Major Island."
Co-presented by Labyrinth Books and Princeton University Press.
AGE GROUP: | Adults |
EVENT TYPE: | Author Talks | *No Registration |
TAGS: | FallPreview24 | Fall Authors 24 |
