The Whitney Lecture on Sept. 21 & 22 Features Professor Emeritus & Visiting Fellow Adrian Horridge from Australian National University

The Whitney Lecture on Sept. 21 & 22 Features Professor Emeritus & Visiting Fellow Adrian Horridge from Australian National University

Published: Sunday, September 18, 2016

The Whitney Lecture, an annual event hosted by the University of Florida Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience, brings renowned scientists to St. Augustine and Gainesville to share significant research and contributions to science. The title of this year’s lecture is “The Disgraceful Affair of the Bees and the Flowers,” which will be presented by Adrian Horridge, professor emeritus and visiting fellow from Australian National University. The Whitney Lecture will be offered at the University of Florida main campus and at Whitney Laboratory in St. Augustine. The first lecture is scheduled for Sept. 21, 2016, at noon at the University of Florida McKnight Brain Institute, DeWeese Auditorium, 1149 Newell Drive in Gainesville. The second lecture will be the following evening on Sept. 22, 2016, at 7 p.m. at the Whitney Laboratory Lohman Auditorium, 9505 Ocean Shore Blvd. in St. Augustine. Both lectures are free and open to the public.

Horridge is a neurobiologist residing in Australia who decided a suitable retirement research project was one on bee vision. He selected this topic because he felt that bee vision research had been going in the wrong direction for almost a century. In this lecture, Horridge will share his recent research on bee vision, which strongly challenges early supported research that bees are attracted to certain flowers based on color. Instead, Horridge’s experiments show that bees do not distinguish colors in the same way as humans.

Horridge has dedicated a lifetime to scientific research with a focus on vision and has influenced neuroscientists and biologists around the world. Born in England, he earned his doctorate from the University of Cambridge. For 24 years, he was a professor at the Research School of Biological Sciences at Australian National University until his retirement in 1993. He has published more than 250 scientific articles, 30 titles and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of England as well as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences.

“It is an extreme honor to have Dr. Horridge, one of the leading experts in the world in comparative neurobiology, here in Florida to share his experiences and vast knowledge to both the scientific community and the public,” said Mark Q. Martindale, director of Whitney Laboratory. “The Whitney Lecture is a wonderful learning opportunity that we are proud to host each year with the support of our trustees.”

The Whitney Lecture began in the early 2000s, with a generous donation to support the lecture series, and it is hosted by the Whitney Board of Trustees. Past speakers of The Whitney Lecture have included Nobel prize-winning researchers as well as artists and conservationists. Speakers have included Baldoremo Olivera, Sydney Brenner, Martin Chalfie, Eric H. Davidson, Walter Gehring, Rodolfo Llinas, Erwin Neher, Carl Safina, Peter Stone and Roger Y. Tsein. For more information about The Whitney Lecture or Whitney Laboratory, call 904-461-4000.