This is the third in our special Polymaths series, following events on polymath powerhouses Thomas Young and D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson. The topic of polymaths brings up lots of interesting questions, so in this special wrapup to the series we’re bringing the speakers back to get to grips with the intellectuals who know about everything. Oliver Morton, the news editor of Nature and the chair for the previous events, will join Andrew and John on stage for a wide-ranging discussion.

They’ll talk about the polymath as a phenomenon in history, but also about whether polymaths are only found in the past. Is it possible to be expert in a wide range of topics anymore? With new knowledge and increasing specialisation, maybe it isn’t. But it’s difficult to argue against increasing knowledge – if we collectively know too much for one person to know everything, maybe we shouldn’t mind if polymaths are extinct. Or do we need at least some polymaths to find new connections in the things we know?

Oliver Morton is Chief News and Features editor at Nature. Oliver joined Nature in late 2005 – a bit more than twenty years after he started off as a science writer doing an internship at The Economist. In the years in between he edited The Economist’s science and technology pages, worked as editor of the UK/Europe edition of Wired, freelanced for everyone from The New Yorker to the Hollywood Reporter, wrote Mapping Mars, a book which the critics liked quite a lot, won a couple of awards, blogged a bit and found a number of other ways to use up half of his life so far.

Andrew Robinson holds degrees from Oxford University and the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. He has worked in book publishing, television and journalism, most recently as literary editor of The Times Higher Education Supplement from 1994-2006. He is currently a visiting fellow of Wolfson College, Cambridge. He is the author of more than fifteen books in the areas of science/history of science, language, and Indian culture. These include the biographies Einstein: A Hundred Years of Relativity, The Man Who Deciphered Linear B: The Story of Michael Ventris, and Satyajit Ray: The Inner Eye. His most recent book is a biography of Thomas Young, The last man who knew everything, described by Sir Patrick Moore as “the best biography I have read for many years”. His next book, The story of measurement, will be published by Thames and Hudson in the autumn of 2007.

Dr John Whitfield is a London-based science writer, whose work appears regularly in Nature and other publications. His book In the beat of a heart: life, energy and the unity of nature was published last autumn. In it – taking D’Arcy Thompson as a guiding spirit – he looks at the idea that a single theory, based on an understanding of how life uses energy, can explain much of the pattern and diversity of the living world, from species diversity to lifespan.

In association with the Royal College of Surgeons of England

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