#  John M. Prather Lecture Series 

 



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### Dr. Neil H. Shubin  
Robert R. Bensley Distinguished Service Professor of Organismal Biology and Anatomy, The University of Chicago   
President-Elect, National Academy of Sciences

### April 15, 16 & 17, 2026

   ![Man with beard and glasses wearing black vest and white shirt smiling](/sites/g/files/omnuum6811/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/2025-10/Neil%20H%20Shubin.jpeg?itok=FAVtrA-G) 

 

[Neil H. Shubin ](https://news.uchicago.edu/profile/neil-shubin)is a renowned evolutionary biologist, educator, author, and science communicator. He has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Chicago as well as senior leadership positions at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole and the Field Museum in Chicago. He has led fossil-hunting expeditions around the world including to Ellesmere Island in Nunavut territory, the northernmost region of Canada, where his multidisciplinary team made a breakthrough discovery in 2004—a fossil representing an intermediate body plan between fish and amphibians. In collaboration with local leaders, the fossilized animal was named Tiktaalik—“large freshwater fish” in Inuktitut. In 2008, Shubin published *Your Inner Fish*, a national bestseller that received the Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science and was recognized by the National Academy of Sciences as the best science book of the year. Currently, at The University of Chicago, he leads a dynamic molecular biology and paleontology research laboratory where researchers experiment with embryos from sharks, paddlefish, and other species. Shubin holds numerous distinctions and honors, including receiving the Roy Chapman Andrews Society Distinguished Explorer Award (2019) and the Viktor Hamburger Outstanding Educator Prize (2024). He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2011 and is currently its President-Elect; he will begin his term on June 30, 2026. Shubin holds a BA in biology from Columbia College of Columbia University and a PhD in organismic and evolutionary biology from Harvard University.

**Wednesday, April 15** - **Science Center Hall D, 1 Oxford Street - 6:00 - 7:00 PM**

*Your Inner Fish Revisited: New Insights into our Fishy Past*

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.

Lecture co-hosted with The [Harvard Museum of Natural History](https://www.hmnh.harvard.edu/event/your-inner-fish-revisited-new-insights-our-fishy-past). [Advance registration is recommended](https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=9CL6b2hFBUGtQy461HJpVwaEfAvKIKRHjDqup5ZqIVNUM0JaS080S0dLRFZDWTJXRllNVkhHS1A3OS4u&route=shorturl).

**Thursday, April 16 - Northwest Building B103, 52 Oxford Street - 3:30 - 4:30 PM**

*The Origin of Walking*

Walking in tetrapods originally arose in fish living in aquatic ecosystems. The origin of fish walking is related to the origin of new fluvial environments in the Devonian, modification of primitive skeletal features and neural circuits, and energetic costs of fish swimming at slow speeds. New fossil discoveries, coupled with an analysis of diverse fish gaits in living and robotic systems, reveals that the most primitive gaits likely involved axial bending with stable appendages. Locomotion, deploying mobile limbs for propulsion and control, was a relatively late addition to this primitive program.

**Friday, April 17 - Northwest Building B103, 52 Oxford Street - 1:00 - 2:00 PM**

*Fossils, Genes, and the Origin of Limbs*

Tetrapod limbs are characterized by three developmental and anatomical compartments: stylopid (upper arm or leg), zeugopod (forearm or foreleg) and autopod (wrists, ankles and digits). Fossils reveal that all three segments are present in the Devonian ancestors of tetrapods. While extant fish do not have the anatomical equivalents of these regions, antecedents exist at the genetic level. For example, Hox gene expression, regulation and 3D chromosomal organization reveal equivalents in fish and suggest scenarios for their origin. The chromosomal region involved with the patterning of digits in tetrapods and, to a lesser extent the terminal region of fish fins, likely arose via cooption from mechanisms patterning the cloaca.

**About John M Prather**  
John McClellan Prather (1864-1938) was a zoologist and educator who primarily taught science at the high school level. He was born in Felicity, Ohio, on Sept. 8, 1864, and earned an A.B. degree at Antioch College in Ohio in 1891. He then earned an A.B. at Harvard in 1894 and an A.M. at Harvard in 1896.

The Prather Lecture Series is co-sponsored by the Departments of OEB and MCB. The OEB public lecture is co-hosted with The Harvard Museum of Natural History