Juan Luis Arsuaga

Juan Luis Arsuaga

Professor Juan Luis Arsuaga, Professor of Palaeontology at the Complutense University of Madrid, gave a keynote lecture at the headquarters of the Rafael del Pino Foundation, in the context of the presentation of his latest book entitled "Mr. Darwin's watch: Why is the theory of the evolution of species so important? His intervention took place on 4 June 2009.

Juan Luis Arsuaga is Professor of Palaeontology at the Complutense University of Madrid and, since 1991, Co-director of the Research Team of the Pleistocene Sites of the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos), which has been awarded the Prince of Asturias Award for Scientific and Technical Research and the Castilla y León Award for Social Sciences and Humanities.

Professor Arsuaga is a member of the monitoring committee of the Musée de l'Homme de Paris and of the steering committee of the International Association for the Study of Human Palaeontology. He is also Vice-President of the Commission on Human Palaeontology and Palaeontology of INQUA (International Union for Quaternary Research) and Visiting Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University College of London.

Throughout his long and prolific academic and research career, he has been the author and editor of numerous scientific books and articles published in journals such as Nature, Science, Journal of Human Evolution, Journal of Archaelogical Science, American Journal of Physical Anthropology, etc.

At the same event, Enrique Baquedano, Director of the Regional Archaeological Museum of the Community of Madrid, will accompany Professor Arsuaga during the lecture Juan Luis Arsuaga describes in this book, in an exciting way, how the idea of evolution was increasingly gaining ground in the mind of Charles Darwin. After the lecture, Professor Arsuaga proceeded to read Darwin's letters while we enjoyed the melodies that his wife Emma played for him on the piano.

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