The Young Darwinian has been founded by Professor Anthony Campbell and his wife, Dr Stephanie Matthews. For over 30 years, they have been actively involved in exciting school students about science and natural history, leading to the establishment of The Darwin Centre in Wales.

ABOUT US – OUR BACKGROUND

The Young Darwinian has been founded by Professor Anthony Campbell and his wife, Dr Stephanie Matthews. For over 30 years, they have been actively involved in exciting school students about science and natural history, leading to the establishment of The Darwin Centre in Wales (see www.darwincentre.com). This has had a huge impact on science education in Pembrokeshire, and Wales as a whole, and has led to many students carrying out projects, attending workshops, and being stimulated by field trips, such as the Great Millennium Glow-worm hunt. Yet there was no vehicle for them to publish their projects and experiences. Nor was there a way they could get positive feedback, and have evidence in their CV that they have benefited from such experiences. The Young Darwinian has been set up as an International journal to achieve this.

AIMS

The primary aim of the journal is to provide an inspiring vehicle, catalysing students to carry out projects and to publish their own work, ideas and experiences. These experiences will include natural history and engineering observations, work experience, field trips, and visits to museums, science centres and companies. Further aims are:

1. To provide students with constructive feedback from experts.
2. To link students together internationally, and with mentors.
3. To help students with their career development.
4. To give teachers and students ideas, to help them work with the curriculum more creatively.
5. To give teachers the opportunity to learn about student projects in other schools and Universities.
6. To enable students and teachers to learn how the education system works in countries other than their own.
7. To give students access to mentors and information about entrepreneurship, and the private sector, in science and engineering.

Anthony Campbell

Anthony was born in Bangor, North Wales, but grew up in London, attending the City of London School. He obtained a first class degree in Natural Sciences, and a PhD in Biochemistry at Cambridge University. He moved to Cardiff as lecturer in Medical Biochemistry in 1970, and is now Professor in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at Cardiff University.

He has worked extensively with bioluminescence, animals that produce light, and on how calcium regulates processes inside cells. He is ran expert in lactose and food intolerance, his research leading to a new hypothesis on the cause of irritable bowel syndrome, and

the mystery illness that afflicted Charles Darwin for 50 years, but was never cured. This revolutionary mechanism provides a link between the gut and the brain, explaining how Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases develop. He pioneered the use of genetically engineered bioluminescence to measure chemical processes in live cells. He has published 10 books, and over 250 internationally peer-reviewed papers. His latest book, ‘Fundamentals of Intracellular calcium’, is a student text and  will be published later this year (2017). Several of his patents have been exploited throughout the world. One of his inventions, using chemiluminescence, is now used in several hundred million clinical tests per year world wide, was awarded the Queen’s Anniversary Prize in 1998, and was selected by the Eureka project of Universities UK in 2006 as one of the top hundred inventions and discoveries from UK Universities in the past fifty years.

He believes passionately about communicating science to the public, and in exciting pupils and students about natural history and cutting edge science. This led him to found the Darwin Centre (www.darwincentre.com) in 1993, now in Pembrokeshire. He also founded the Public Understanding of Science (PUSH) group at Cardiff University in 1994, which organises many events with schools and the public. He gives regular talks on food intolerance, Darwin, and bioluminescence, at scientific meetings, to schools and the public. He won the Inspire Wales award for Science and Technology in 2011. He was elected a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales in 2013. He is a Fellow of the Linnean Society, and was elected to the Council of the in 2013. He founded The Young Darwinian, with his wife Stephanie Matthews, in 2017. Here is his Cardiff University, School of Pharmacy  web page: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/people/view/90830-campbell-anthony.

Here is the front cover of his new student book published by Wiley this year (2018).