2026 Prather Lecture Series: Neil H. Shubin
Date and Time
Location
Neil H. Shubin
Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago
President-Elect, National Academy of Sciences
Your Inner Fish Revisited: New Insights into our Fishy Past
Abstract: Every organ, cell, and gene preserves traces of life’s long evolutionary journey, from ancient fish that first ventured onto land to primates that ultimately gave rise to humans. In this lecture, Neil Shubin, evolutionary biologist and author of the widely acclaimed national bestseller Your Inner Fish (Vintage 2009) will explore the deep history embedded within the human body. Drawing on fossil discoveries, comparative anatomy, and modern DNA technologies, he will explain how major evolutionary transitions occur and what they reveal about our place in nature. This talk offers an account of how chance events, evolutionary innovation, and adaptation over billions of years have shaped the human form and linked us to all other life on Earth.
The Prather Lecture Series is co-hosted by OEB and MCB. The public lecture is co-hosted with The Harvard Museum of Natural History