Evolutionary Biologist Judson Delivers Lectures as Part of Darwin’s Bicentennial Celebration

      Evolutionary biologist Olivia Judson, right, delivered a pair of lectures at NYU this spring. The first, “The Art of Seduction: Sex, Evolution, and the Public,” took place in the Jurow Lecture Hall in Silver Center. The second was keynote for the annual student-faculty colloquium in NYU’s Liberal Studies Program. This year’s theme was “Darwin: The (R)Evolutionary Idea.”
      The lectures, co-sponsored by NYU’s Department of Biology, the Liberal Studies Program, and NYU’s Dean for Science, were part of Darwin’s Bicentennial Celebration and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Origin of Species.
      Judson, a research fellow at Imperial College London, authored Dr. Tatiana’s Sex Advice to All Creation in the style of a sex-advice column to animals. The book details the variety of sexual practices in the natural world and provides the reader with an overview of the evolutionary biology of sex. It became an international bestseller and was nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction in 2003.