Enchanted by Daphne: The Life of an Evolutionary Naturalist

(Hardback)

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The extraordinary life story of the celebrated naturalist who transformed our understanding of evolution

Enchanted by Daphne is legendary ecologist Peter Grants personal account of his remarkable life and career. In this revelatory book, Grant takes readers from his childhood in World War IIera Britain to his ongoing research today in the Galpagos archipelago, vividly describing what it's like to do fieldwork in one of the most magnificent yet inhospitable places on Earth. This is also the story of two brilliant and courageous biologists raising a family together while balancing the demands of professional lives that would take them to the far corners of the globe.

In 1973, Grant and his wife, Rosemary, embarked on a journey that would fundamentally change how we think about evolution. Over the next four decades, they visited the Galpagos every year to observe Darwins famous finches on the remote, uninhabited island of Daphne Major. Documenting how eighteen species have diversified from a single ancestral species, they demonstrated that we could actually see and measure evolution in a natural setting. Grant recounts the blind alleys and breathtaking triumphs of this historic research as he and Rosemary followed in Darwins footstepsand ushered in a new era in ecology.

A wonderfully absorbing portrait of a life in science, Enchanted by Daphne is an unforgettable chronicle of the travels and discoveries of one of the worlds most influential naturalists.

Author Bio

Peter R. Grant is the Class of 1877 Professor of Zoology Emeritus at Princeton University. His books include Ecology and Evolution of Darwins Finches and (with B. Rosemary Grant) 40 Years of Evolution: Darwins Finches on Daphne Major Island (both Princeton).