Menno Schilthuizen

Menno Schilthuizen is a senior research scientist at Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands and professor of evolutionary biology at Leiden University. He received his PhD from Leiden University in 1994, obtained two postdoctoral fellowships at Wageningen University, and then spent seven years in Malaysian Borneo as associate professor at the Institute for Tropical Biology and Conservation. His research revolves around evolution of biodiversity in insects and land snails and he has written more than 100 high-impact papers in the scientific literature on these and other subjects. Besides his scientific work, he is a prolific science popularizer who has written more than 250 stories, columns, and articles for publications including New Scientist, Time, and Science. A frequent guest on radio and television, he is the author of Frogs, Flies and Dandelions (Oxford University Press, 2001), The Loom of Life (Springer, 2008), and Nature’s Nether Regions (Viking, 2014). His most recent book, Darwin Comes to Town is forthcoming from Picador.