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Worm takes first prize

Press release issued: 25 November 2004

First prize in Bristol University's first writing competition Raising re:search has been won by Dr Simon Harvey from the School of Biological Sciences for his article on the evolution of the nematode worm entitled 'Lamarck's blacksmiths and the worm's genes'.

First prize in Bristol University’s first writing competition Raising re:search has been won by Dr Simon Harvey from the School of Biological Sciences for his article on the evolution of the nematode worm entitled ‘Lamarck’s blacksmiths and the worm’s genes’. 

The competition aimed to find the best article written for the public by a member of the University's research staff about a piece of their research or an enterprise-related activity at Bristol. The prize was awarded by Professor Sir John Beringer, Pro-Vice Chancellor for research.

Dr Harvey was awarded the £500 First Prize for his article relating the work of the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) to modern research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. Dr Harvey said: “While we now know that Lamark’s theory of evolution was completely wrong, there is greater value in remembering his successes rather than his failures. After all, no less a man than Charles Darwin acknowledged Lamark as a great zoologist and a pioneer in the study of evolutionary biology”.

The £300 Second Prize was won by Dr Edward Forman in the Department of French for an article entitled ‘Excuses, excuses… Tragic guilt and extenuation’, which examines the nature of human responsibility using both real-life court cases and Classical and Shakespearean tragedy.

The £200 Third Prize was shared by Dr Tom Mole in the Department of English for his article on the origins of the modern celebrity, ‘Are Celebrities a Thing of the Past?’ and Dr Laurence White in the Department of Experimental Psychology for his article on speech segmentation, ‘Making sense of speech: it depends on how you slice it’.

The prize for the best article on an enterprise-related activity was awarded to Judith Evans of the Food Refrigeration and Process Engineering Research Centre. Judith won a PDA with wi-fi, generously donated by Toshiba, for her article on Futuristic Fridges.
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