Matt Wilkinson - Four Way Interview

Matt Wilkinson is a zoologist and science communicator at the University of Cambridge. His work has been covered in the Telegraph, Metro, New Scientist and Nature. In 2007 he attended drama school and wrote a play about T.H. Huxley that premiered at the 2009 Darwin Festival. Restless Creatures is his first book.

Why science?

Like most scientists and science enthusiasts, I just love finding out how the world works, and uncovering its secrets! And I've found that the deeper you look, the more beautiful it becomes. It's a fascination that can never run out, because answering one question invariably leads to many more.

Why this book?

I studied pterodactyl flight in my PhD years, which opened my eyes to the all-pervading influence of physics - particularly the physics of locomotion - on the evolution of life. Once I had become familiar with the basic principles of movement, many fundamental aspects of living things and their evolution seemed to fall into place. It was and continues to be immensely satisfying - even exhilarating at times - to 'get' life in this way, and Restless Creatures is my attempt to share that satisfaction with others.

What’s next?

There are a few potential sophomore avenues I might explore - among them the evolution of chemical communication in all its guises, or of the voice. I'm also thinking of putting my playwright hat on again!

What’s exciting you at the moment?

My current bee in bonnet is the evolution of the idea of evolution, and why it was only when Darwin weighed in that the idea - with a long pre-Darwinian heritage - achieved widespread acceptance. The political and social currency of evolution fascinates me.

Comments

Target Earth – Govert Schilling *****

I was biased in favour of this great little book even before I started to read it, simply because it’s so short. I’m sure that a lot of people who buy popular science books just want an overview and taster of a subject that’s brand new to them – and that’s likely to work best if the author keeps it short and to the point. Of course, you may want to dig deeper in areas that really interest you, but that’s what Google is for. That basic principle aside, I’m still in awe at how much substance Govert Schilling has managed to cram into this tiny book. It’s essentially about all the things (natural things, I mean, not UFOs or space junk) that can end up on Earth after coming down from outer space. That ranges from the microscopically small particles of cosmic dust that accumulate in our gutters, all the way up to the ten kilometre wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Between these extremes are two topics that we’ve reviewed entire books about recently: meteorites ( The Meteorite Hunt...

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In his last book, Henry Gee impressed with his A (Very) Short History of Life on Earth - this time he zooms in on one very specific aspect of life on Earth - humans - and gives us not just a history, but a prediction of the future - our extinction. The book starts with an entertaining prologue, to an extent bemoaning our obsession with dinosaurs, a story that leads, inexorably towards extinction. This is a fate, Gee points out, that will occur for every species, including our own. We then cover three potential stages of the rise and fall of humanity (the book's title is purposely modelled on Gibbon) - Rise, Fall and Escape. Gee's speciality is palaeontology and in the first section he takes us back to explore as much as we can know from the extremely patchy fossil record of the origins of the human family, the genus Homo and the eventual dominance of Homo sapiens , pushing out any remaining members of other closely related species. As we move onto the Fall section, Gee gives ...

The New Lunar Society - David Mindell *****

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