Wallace Arthur
Wallace Arthur (born 30 March 1952) is an evolutionary biologist and science writer. He is Emeritus Professor of Zoology at the National University of Ireland, Galway. His most recent book is "The Biological Universe: Life in the Milky Way and Beyond", published by Cambridge University Press in 2020, which focuses on the likely extent (how many planets?) and nature (how much like us?) of extraterrestrial life. He was one of the founding editors of the journal Evolution & Development, serving as an editor for nearly 20 years. He has held visiting positions at Harvard University, Darwin College Cambridge, and  the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland. He is currently Visiting Scientist at Kielder Observatory in Northumberland, England. Early life and education. Wallace Arthur was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in 1952. He attended Friends School Lisburn and Campbell College Belfast. He received a BSc in biology from the University of Ulster in 1973 and a PhD in evolutionary biology from the University of Nottingham in 1977. Scientific work. Arthur describes himself as "a bit of a maverick" who likes "making connections across disciplinary boundaries". His early work was at the interface between evolution and ecology, his later  work at the interface between evolution and development, or ‘evo-devo’. His main contributions have been on the origin of animal body plans, the role of developmental bias in evolution, and the evolution of arthropod segmentation. His most recent book explores the interface between biology and astronomy, with two key themes: the likelihood of life having evolved on multiple exoplanets, and the nature of that life being probably not too different to life on Earth. Arthur is a proponent of a more comprehensive evolutionary synthesis that takes into account progress in the field of evo-devo.