Richard Fortey
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Richard A. Fortey FRS (born 1946 in London) is a British paleontologist and writer, formerly a Merit Researcher at the Natural History Museum in London. Since 1997, he has been a member of the Royal Society.
Prof. Fortey’s research interests include, above all, trilobites. He has stated that he found his first one when he was 14, and the interest later turned into a career. He has named numerous trilobite species and still continues this research at the Museum and at Oxford University.
Fortey studies trilobites and graptolites, especially those from the Ordovician, and their systematics, evolution and modes of life. He is also involved in research on Ordovician palaeogeography and correlation; arthropod evolution, especially the origin of major groups; and the relationships between divergence times as revealed by molecular evidence and the fossil record.
He has won the Lewis Thomas Prize for science writing (2003) and is the 2006 holder of the Royal Society's Michael Faraday Prize for the public communication of science. He has also turned his pen to writing dinosaur poems for children and even a spoof book on the rubic cube. In 1993, Fortey's The Hidden Landscape was named the Natural World Book of the Year. He appeared on BBC2's "University Challenge - The Professionals" in 2004, as a member of the Palaeontological Association team, who beat the Eden Project.
Professor Fortey has been elected to be President of the Geological Society of London for its bicentennial year of 2007 and was recently awarded an honorary degree by the University of St Andrews.
He was also one of the scientists who worked on the Discovery Channel program The Future Is Wild.
[edit] Books
- The Hidden Landscape (1993)
- Life: An Unauthorized Biography. A Natural History of the First Four Billion Years of Life on Earth (1997)
- Trilobite!: Eyewitness to Evolution (2000)
- Fossils: The Key to the Past (2002)
- The Earth: An Intimate History (2004)
- Dry Store Room no.1 (2008)
