Darwin Day 2007

The 2007 Darwin Day lecture was delivered by Aileen Fyfe who has been a lecturer in the History Department at NUI Galway since 2000. She teaches courses in the history of science and technology, and the history of publishing.

The title of the lecture was: "The Beagle and the Watchmaker: did religion matter to Darwin?". The lecture took place on Thursday 8th February in the Burke theatre, Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin.

Aileen Fyfe has been a lecturer in the History Department at Galway since 2000, where she teaches courses in the history of science and technology, and the history of publishing. She is originally from Glasgow, and was educated there and in Leeds. She studied Natural Sciences at Jesus College, Cambridge, before converting to the History and Philosophy of Science for a Ph.D. She was until recently the Treasurer of the British Society for the History of Science, and is a member of the Royal Irish Academy's National Committee for the History of Irish Science.

In 2004-05, she was the recipient of an IRCHSS Government of Ireland Fellowship, and was able to be a Visiting Scholar at Cambridge, and a Bibliographical Society of America Fellow at the American Antiquarian Society. During her sabbatical leave (2005-06) she was a Senior Visiting Research Scholar at Oxford.

Dr. Fyfe is interested in the relations between science and religion, especially but not only in the context of science communication activities. Her book, Science and Salvation: evangelicals and popular science publishing, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004.