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24 June 2004
Who are Britain's top public intellectuals?
Prospect has compiled a list of the top 100 British public intellectuals (found via Azeem's open scratchpad) and they want their readers to vote on the top five:
The basic qualification we used was distinction in a field of intellectual or cultural endeavour coupled with an ability to communicate well to generalist audiences through the written or spoken word... The emphasis must lie on a sliding scale between their 'public' and 'intellectual' roles.
My personal favourites: Richard Dawkins, Philip Pullman, Mary Midgely, Simon Schama, and AS Byatt. Germaine Greer almost made it but Prospect is stressing current contribution.
Oh, and Pullman scores the most points for having a splendid site of his own, and Dawkins gets an honourable mention for:
Richard Dawkins' homepage at Oxford UniversityI have no official web site. John Catalano has an excellent unofficial one which does everything I could possibly do if I had a site of my own, and much more. It is located at: http://www.world-of-dawkins.com/
Quite apart from material connected with me and my books, his pages are a superb resource on all kinds of scientific matters.
Richard Dawkins,
Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,
Oxford University
See also: David Herman's assessment of Britain's intellectual atmosphere
Posted at 10:37 PM | Permalink
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» Britain's top intellectuals from open scratchpad : economics, technology, media
Prospect has reported back on Britain's top intellectuals. I got four out of five. The only one who didn't sneak in was John Kay and I guess I was just mesmerised by his ascendancy to an Oxford fellowship age 20. [Read More]
Tracked on 21 Jul 2004 15:28:46
Comments
The thing I love most about Richard Dawkins’s almost not a home page is the fact that his head shot seems to have been taken by Romana from Dr Who. I say ‘seems to’ because I assumed there could be more than one Lalla Ward in the world. And there certainly could be, but it seems the same Lalla Ward (or, The Honourable Lady Sarah Ward, to use her full, titled name) who took over the role of Romana (or ‘Romanadvoratrelundar’, if you’re hardcore) from Mary Tamm, and was, for a time, married to Tom Baker, is now married to Richard Dawkins. So it’s probably a fair assumption (albeit not necessarily a scientifically vigorous one) to make that Romana is indeed responsible for the photo of Richard Dawkins.
Amazing what you learn when you follow a hyperlink from someone's blog!
Posted by: Dom at 25 Jun 2004 00:30:10
Further urban legend holds that Richard met his wife at a party hosted by the late Douglas Adams.
Cool of you Foe that Dawkins is so high on your list. He is literally the one living person I hold in absolute intellectual awe.
Posted by: Bryan at 25 Jun 2004 05:04:26
