supercurricular lecture

We were delighted this evening to welcome back guest speaker Zoe Hulme to UGS to deliver the latest in our series of supercurricular lectures on "Competition and Collaboration: driving Science forward".

Zoe took us on a journey from the 18th century that saw competition between French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin on the subject of natural selection and the theory of evolution.

Through to Ptolomy, Copernicus, Kepler, Leibniz, Newton, Geocentric vs Heliocentric; developments in DNA, the discovery of the double helix, and the issues surrounding Crick, Watson, Wilkins, Rosalind Franklin and Photo 51; and all the way to Epigenetics.

Zoe then reflected on when, how, and why things have changed in Science and scientific research; and the pretty seismic shift in 1990 that saw the introduction of the Human Genome Project, an all-important moment that fostered open data sharing in science.

As Zoe observed in conclusion, collaboration, rather than competition, on a large scale, accelerated the pace of biomedical research, and ultimately facilitated outcomes like the rapid response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and current developments in weight-loss jabs that were originally designed for the treatment of type 2 diabetes.

It was fantastic to see so many of our students, parents and carers in attendance tonight, with huge thanks to Zoe for giving her time to inspire us all!