8th May 2001: "Liaisons of Life"

Dr. Tom Wakeford is a biologist based at Brunel University in West London, and has won both the Young Science Writer of the Year Award (1996) and the New Scientist Millennium Science Prize. He has studied at Cambridge University, York University and in 1993 worked on planetary biology for NASA in Pittsburgh.

Microbes have long been considered dangerous and disgusting - in short, 'scum'. But by forming mutually beneficial relationships with nearly every creature, be it algae with animals or zooplankton with zebrafish, microbes have in fact been innovative players in the evolutionary process. Tom Wakeford will take us to far-flung locales such as underwater volcanoes, African termite mounds, the belly of a cow and even the gaps between our teeth, and there introduce us to a microscopic world at turns bizarre, seductive, and frightening, but ever responsible for advancing life in our macroscopic world.

Come along and join us at 7pm in Blackwells Main Bookshop, Broad Street, Oxford.
No ticket, no booking, no scientific background required.

• Liaisons of Life: From Hornworts to Hippos, How the Unassuming Microbe Has Driven Evolution
• Science for the Earth, with Martin Walters