Pulitzer winner to speak on creation-evolution debate

A Pulitzer Prize-winning historian will offer his insights into a landmark trial over evolutionary theory in a lecture Friday, Feb. 26.

Edward J. Larson, a UW–Madison alumnus, will speak in 132 Noland Hall at 4 p.m. The Department of History of Science is sponsoring the appearance, which is a free event open to the public.

Larson’s book, “Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion” (New York: BasicBooks, 1997), won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in history.

The book examines the highly publicized trial of a Dayton, Tenn., high- school teacher, John T. Scopes, who was charged with violating state law by teaching the theory of evolution. World attention focused on the trial, which pitted fundamentalist literal belief in scripture against scientific theory.

Scopes was convicted and fined $100, but on appeal, the state supreme court acquitted Scopes on the technicality that he had been fined excessively. The law was repealed in 1967.

Larson has been researching the creation-evolution debate since he was a doctoral candidate at UW–Madison. His Ph.D. thesis explored “public science vs. popular opinion: the creation-evolution legal controversy.”