John Maddox

Sir John Royden Maddox (born 27 November, 1925 in Penllergaer, Swansea, Wales), a trained chemist and physicist, is a prominent science writer. He was an editor of Nature for 22 years.

Additional recommended knowledge

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Sir John Maddox studied chemistry and physics at Oxford University and King’s College London. From 1949 to 1955 he lectured in theoretical physics at the University of Manchester. He then became the science correspondent at the Manchester Guardian until 1964. From 1964 to 1966 he was the coordinator of the Nuffield Science Teaching Project, after which he was appointed as the editor of Nature, a role he held twice, from 1966-1973 and 1980-1995. He was director of Nuffield Foundation from 1975 to 1979. Maddox was knighted in 1995 and was made an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society in 2000. He is currently a Distinguished Supporter of the British Humanist Association and a Trustee of Sense About Science.

Sheldrake editorial

When the book A New Science of Life by British biologist Rupert Sheldrake was published in 1981, proposing the theory of morphic resonance instead of DNA as the basis for shapes and behavior in nature, Maddox denounced it fiercely in an editorial titled "A book for burning?" He elaborated in a 1994 BBC documentary on Sheldrake's theory: "I was so offended by it, that I said that while it's wrong that books should be burned, in practice, if book burning were allowed, this book would be a candidate (...) I think it's dangerous that people should be allowed by our liberal societies to put that kind of nonsense into currency. It's unnecessary to introduce magic into the explanation from[sic] physical and biological phenomenon when in fact there is every likelihood that the continuation of research as it is now practiced will indeed fill all the gaps that Sheldrake draws attention to. You see, Sheldrake's is not a scientific theory. Sheldrake is putting forward magic instead of science, and that can be condemned, in exactly the language that the popes used to condemn Galileo, and for the same reasons: it is heresy."^[1]

Bibliography

• What Remains to Be Discovered: Mapping the Secrets of the Universe, the Origins of Life, and the Future of the Human Race. ISBN 0-684-82292-X (hardcover, 1998), ISBN 0-684-86300-6 (paperback, 1999)

References

1. ^ Morphic Fields at Google Video