And the winner is...Ms Kathryn Tabb

Ms Kathryn Tabb

Just announced...Ms Kathryn Tabb is the winner of the £1000 prize offered by the Darwin Correspondence Project essay contest.


Darwin Correspondence Project

2008 essay prize winner

The Darwin Correspondence Project is delighted to announce that the winner of its first Templeton essay prize in Darwin and religion is Kathryn Tabb, for her essay Darwin on Orchis Bank. Ms Tabb is a graduate of the University of Chicago, and is enrolled in a PhD programme at the University of Pittsburg, where she will begin studies in the history and philosophy of biology this autumn. She has just completed an MPhil at the University of Cambridge.

Entries for the prize were received from six different countries, from high school, undergraduate and graduate students in a wide range of disciplines. The Project wishes to thank the John Templeton Foundation for funding the essay prize, and all the entrants for their submissions. Another round of prizes will be awarded in 2009, the details of which will be announced in September 2008.

The essay will be published here when available.

"Gates scholar takes Darwin Correspondence Project essay prize"

July 21st, 2008

University of Cambridge

An MPhil student at Cambridge University's Department of the History and Philosophy of Science has won a £1000 prize in an essay competition connecting Darwin’s work with debates on science and religion.

Kathryn Tabb, a graduate of the University of Chicago who came over to Cambridge as a Gates Scholar, picked up the prize for an essay examining the implications of Darwin's work on orchids.

"Darwin at Orchis Bank" saw off competition from entrants in six different countries working in fields as diverse as theology, creative writing and biology.

The essay considered his work on orchid morphology and pollination and its implications for the question of design in nature, drawing parallels and contrasts with contemporary ideas of 'intelligent design'. Darwin's research was discussed at length in correspondence with noted Harvard botanist Asa Gray, an ardent Presbyterian.

Dr Paul White, who organised the competition, said: "It is very gratifying for us on the Darwin Correspondence Project to see a student engaging with these historical materials with such thoughtfulness and enthusiasm, and exploring its modern relevance."

Competition entrants were encouraged to study Darwin's letters closely and to explore their relevance to contemporary discussions, as well of those with the 19th century.

The competition, which was open to students from all disciplines and stages of education, forms part of an initiative on Darwin and religion started by the Correspondence Project in 2007.

Its long term goal is to create a web resource to bring together material from Darwin's correspondence relevant to questions on science and religion with modern commentaries by leading authorities on the various areas of the debate. Kathryn's essay will be published on the Project's website as part of this effort.

Funding for the award was provided by the John Templeton Foundation, established in 1987 by philanthropist Sir John Templeton to fund work in the natural sciences, philosophy and theology, solutions to poverty and education.

The Darwin Correspondence Project, which is based at the University Library, is dedicated to locating and publishing Darwin's letters. To date, it has located around 14,500 letters exchanged by Darwin and more than 2000 correspondents, and has made the complete texts of nearly 6000 of these available in print or online.

The Gates Scholarships were established in October 2000, through a $210 million gift to the University of Cambridge from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The benefaction creates in perpetuity an international scholarship programme for foreign students to study at Cambridge.


University of Cambridge

Gates Cambridge Scholarships

Ms Kathryn Tabb

Hometown and State: New York City, NY

Current/most recent university: University of Chicago

Degree & Subject at Cambridge: MPhil in History Phil & Sociol of Sci, Techno'gy & Medicine

My name is Kathryn Tabb; I was born in New York City and attended St. Ann's School in Brooklyn. In 2006 I graduated from the University of Chicago with a concentration in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science (HPS), an interdisciplinary program that allowed variegated studies across the spectrum of my interests. While at Chicago, inspired by a visit to Mexico with a service committee in 2002, I began teaching at an adult education program for recent immigrants. I was hired as Assistant Director in the summer of 2004. My academic work culminated in a prize-winning philosophical and historiographical investigation of the teleology at work in evolutionary theory, and I am currently applying what I learned through this project to a radical and fascinating branch of my discipline - the philosophy of psychiatry and clinical psychology. In so doing my intention is to re-conceptualize contemporary treatment and diagnostic practices in these fields. The outstanding engagement of the Cambridge HPS faculty with both the philosophy of biology and the human sciences makes it the perfect place to bridge my two interests. In pursuing a Ph.D. I aim to obtain a professorship in the philosophy of biology, psychology, or an allied field.

"Alumna anticipates Cambridge studies on Gates scholarship"

by

Julia Morse

University of Chicago Chronicle

After being named a 2007 Gates-Cambridge scholar, 2006 College alumna Kathryn Tabb will be studying next fall at Cambridge University—exactly where she wants to be.

"It is one of the best programs in the world for my field of study," Tabb said of the graduate program in History and Philosophy of Science. "It's such a specific interest that there are few departments specifically dedicated to it. I’m excited to be in a community of people who share my interests within history and philosophy."

While enrolled at Chicago, Tabb found additional career inspiration while on a social service trip to Mexico in 2002, after which she began teaching at an adult education program for recent immigrants in Chicago.

Tabb is currently focusing on what she called a "radical and fascinating branch of my discipline—the philosophy of psychiatry and clinical psychology."

She said, "In so doing, my intention is to re-conceptualize contemporary treatment and diagnostic practices in these fields."

Tabb received an A.B. in History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science and Medicine from Chicago. She said she is looking forward to taking the knowledge she gained during her undergraduate career into her graduate career. "Like Chicago, Cambridge is a vibrant educational community, and I can’t wait to be there," she said. Tabb is one of three 2006 Chicago graduates to receive the Gates Cambridge scholarship from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Alumni Anyu Fang and Karen McClendon, also won the scholarships.



£1000 essay prize

"Darwin on Orchis Bank"--winning essay

As promised, here is Kathryn Tabb's winning essay sponsored by the Darwin Correspondence Project and the Templeton foundation.

A selection:

Several Darwin scholars have argued that Orchids contraverts Paley with a very different rhetoric from the Origin, one that at times seems sympathetic to him. Typifying such arguments John Agnus Campbell writes, "In the course of his infectious expressions of delight over the 'beautiful' and 'curious' structures he finds, Darwin both powerfully repeats yet subtly displaces the natural theology vocabulary he invokes: Darwin seems to 'out Paley Paley'" (Campbell 1994, 72). This paper will make the further point that Orchids subverts the rhetoric of natural theology by troubling the analogy with divine design that Darwin established in his previous work.

Download the full essay at...

Darwin Correspondence Project


And the winner is...Ms Kathryn Tabb

Dr. Rebecca McLeod takes "MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year Awards"

Dr. Rebecca McLeod

Excellent. Like recent Kathryn Tabb [Darwin Correspondence Project (United Kingdom)] another young woman has taken the top MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year Awards prize in New Zealand for her research on rain forests that their reduction "...can destroy life deep below the sea's surface, as well as that below the trees...."

"Fiordland study leads to top science laurel"

by

Craig Borley

August 15th, 2008

The New Zealand Herald

Cutting down rainforests can destroy life deep below the sea's surface, as well as that below the trees, a young Dunedin scientist has discovered.

The research won University of Otago marine ecologist Rebecca McLeod the top prize at last night's MacDiarmid Young Scientist of the Year Awards in Auckland.

A further 10 prizes were awarded, for young scientists researching topics ranging from well-meaning tourists' harmful effects on yellow-eyed penguins to preventing blue-stain fungi in timber.

Dr McLeod's research began 420m beneath Doubtful Sound, where the 30-year-old encountered the jawless, toothless and blind slimy hagfish.

She began to research the fish's diet, and discovered a complex food web - coastal deep-water creatures relied on neighbouring coastal forests for their food.

Slips and rivers transport logs and leaves to the sea. The vegetation sinks, rots like compost on the seafloor and produces hydrogen sulphide. That is then taken up by bacteria and, through chemical reactions, is turned into carbohydrate energy.

Those bacteria live inside clams and worms, which are eaten by the hagfish - meaning the forest nearly half a kilometre above is feeding the deep-water fish below.

She concluded the fish depended on the forest above for half their nutritional needs. Other common species, including blue cod and rock lobster, also obtained energy originally from the forests, she found.

Fiordland was one of the few places where intact rainforest bordered a pristine marine ecosystem, she said.

"That environment gives us an insight into how our coastal ecosystem functioned before humans started cutting down trees. That link, between the condition of the forest and marine life, has been largely ignored in the past.

"I guess we'll never really know how much the deforestation that's been carried out already has altered the marine environment."

Dr McLeod said the knowledge could help in future marine reserves.

Her win includes a cash prize of $10,000 and a trip to Britain to attend the British Association for the Advancement of Science festival. She is named the Young Scientist of the Year and also receives the MacDiarmid Medal.

Dr McLeod said the award would help her chances of securing research funding in New Zealand, allowing her to stay here and achieve her long-term goal - to be a NZ-based academic.

The lead judge of the awards, Rutherford Medal winner Professor Richard Faull, said the judges had looked for innovation and research brilliance, mixed with good communication and simple concepts.


"Darwin on Orchis Bank"--winning essay

[Thanks to stringer Tim.]