Convocation: David Quammen

David Quammen is a science journalist and nonfiction author. He travels on assignment for various magazines, usually to jungles, deserts, or swamps, and his accustomed beat is the world of field biology, ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation. He currently holds the positions of Contributing Writer for National Geographic Magazine and Wallace Stegner Professor of Western American Studies at Montana State University. In his book The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, Quammen focuses careful attention on Charles Darwin, father of modern biology and source of an idea so radical its implications are still only imperfectly understood: evolution by natural selection. Quammen tracks the naturalist's life through the two decades following his epiphany that "natural selection" formed the basis of evolution, a time during which Darwin kept his explosive idea under wraps and pondered when and how to release it to the world. Commemorating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, Quammen’s presentation was titled "Charles Darwin Against Himself: Caution versus Honesty in the Life of a Reluctant Revolutionary."