This article was first published in Viewpoint: Magazine of the British Society for the History of Science, issue no. 116, June 2018

At the end of a career of almost six decades, in the first pages of the last book he would ever publish, French zoologist and evolutionary...

"You can't go to Houston! They have guns there!"

These words were uttered by my French mother when I announced that I would be going to Houston, alone, after Christmas. I refrained from rolling my eyes at her and saying: "Yeah, because no one ever gets shot in Paris". I...