Dame Gillian Beer, author of Darwin's Plots, specializes in exploring the relations between the cultures of science and literature, explaining the fundamental implications of Darwin's work in relation to other diverse writers such as Shakespeare, Lucretius and Wordsworth. Beer's Open Fields: Science in Cultural Encounter addresses questions about the relations of science and literature; encompassing not only Darwin, but also Helmholz, Kelvin, Frazer, Tyndall, and Hopkins.
Her husband, John Beer, Emeritus Professor of Literature at the University of Cambridge, will speak at 6:45 p.m. on Thursday, April 12, on Romantic Apocalypsesis. He is a preeminent scholar and critic of English Romanticism, and his work has shed light on some of the most complex and honorable poets - Woodsworth, Blake and Coleridge - revealing the power of poetry to transform the thought of its day through pursuit of truth. He has written and edited several distinguished books such as Coleridge the Visionary; The Achievements of E.M. Forster; and Blake's Humanism.