Heroes’ Wall

Unsung heroes and popularizers of nature: Andrew Benson, Gregor Mendel, David Attenborough, Rosalind Franklin, Sir Peter Scott, Carl Sagan, Erwin Chargaff, Rachel Carson, Morris Wilkins, Gerald Durrell, Patrick Moore.

Listen to Vinnie’s lecture about the Heroes’ Wall on the Home page.

some interesting quotations…

“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.” Charles Darwin was born in England on the 12th of February 1809, he died on the 19th of April 1882.

“Firstly what does conservation mean? It is not merely the saving from extinction of such species as the Notornis, the Leadbetters Possum or the Leathery Turtle; this is important work but it is only part of the problem. You cannot begin to preserve any species of animal unless you preserve the habitat in which it dwells. Disturb or destroy that habitat and you will exterminate the species as surely as if you had shot it. So conservation means that you have to preserve forest and grassland, river and lake, even the sea itself. This is not only vital for the preservation of animal life generally, but for the future existence of man himself — a point that seems to escape many people.” Gerald Durrell

When told off by his boss at Kings college London for “letting the cat out of the bag’, by showing photo 51 to James Watson. Wilkins said “I don’t think science, no more than cats should be kept in bags.” Maurice Wilkins.

“I mean, the general rule is if you’re not prepared to make a mistake, you’re not going to make much progress.” Maurice Wilkins

My response is that when Creationists talk about God creating every individual species as a separate act, they always instance hummingbirds, or orchids, sunflowers and beautiful things. But I tend to think instead of a parasitic worm that is boring through the eye of a boy sitting on the bank of a river in West Africa, a worm that’s going to make him blind. And I ask them, ‘… David Attenborough on God

David Attenborough talks in the Daily Mail about a belief in God and a belief in evolution being not necessarily incompatible.

“If you want to save your child from polio, you can pray or you can inoculate.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World

“If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over the christening of all children I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against the boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.” Rachel Carson, The Sense of Wonder
2012 is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Silent Spring.