Adrian Desmond

Adrian J. Desmond (* 1947 ) is a British historian of science, best known for a biography of Charles Darwin , which he wrote with James R. Moore , and publications on the history of evolution .

Desmond studied Physiology, Paleontology and History of Science at University College London and Harvard University with Stephen Jay Gould . He received his PhD with a dissertation on the Victorian setting for the development of Darwin's theory of evolution.

In his 1982 book Archetypes and Anchestors , he examined the role of fossils in the 19th century debates on evolutionary theory, and in The Politics of Evolution of 1989, which received the Pfizer Award in 1991 , he examined the political context of pre-Darwin evolution theories, in particular among the London radicals. He lives in Berkshire.

In his first book, The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs from 1975, he advocated the thesis that dinosaurs were warm-blooded and that birds were descended from dinosaurs. The book received a lot of attention and was the source of a BBC documentary. In 1979 a book about sign language of chimpanzees followed.

In 1991 the Darwin biography appeared. The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize , the Comisso Italian Prize for Biography, the Watson Davis Prize from the US History of Science Society, and the Dingle Prize from the British Society for the History of Science . 1997 followed a biography of Darwin's colleague Thomas Huxley . He published a shorter Darwin biography with Moore and Janet Browne .

With James Moore and Janet Browne he wrote the entry on Darwin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , he wrote the entry on Huxley and the Darwin entry in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He wrote many reviews and newspaper articles on the history of evolution. He also edited Huxley's correspondence with his family.

He is a Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a member of the British Society for the History of Science , the History of Science Society and the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology.

In 1993 he received the Founder's Medal of the Society of the History of Natural History. He is an Honorary Research Follow from University College London.

Fonts

• The Hot-blooded Dinosaurs: a revolution in palaeontology , Dial Press 1975
• The Ape's Reflection , Dial Press 1979
• Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London, 1850-1875 , University of Chicago Press 1982
• The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, medicine and reform in radical London , University of Chicago Press 1989, 1992
• with James Moore: Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist , London: Joseph 1991
  • German edition: Darwin, Rowohlt 1994
• Huxley , London: Joseph, Volume 1: The Devil's Discipl, 1994, Volume 2: Evolution's high priest 1997, in a volume with Penguin 1998
• with Janet Browne, James Moore: Charles Darwin (Very Interesting People) , 2007
  • German translation: Charles Darwin: in a nutshell, Spektrum Akademischer Verlag 2008
• with James Moore: Darwin's Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery, and the Quest for Human Origins , Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2009

Web links

• Biography with Houghton Mifflin