Andrew Parker

Professor Andrew Parker spent ten years studying marine biology and physics in Australia, working on structural colour in nature. Returning to the UK as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Oxford University in 1999, he worked on colour, vision, biomimetics and evolution. In 2000, based on his ‘Light Switch Theory’ for the cause of the Big Bang in evolution, he was selected as one of the top eight scientists in the UK as a ‘Scientist for the New Century’ by The Royal Institution. The Light Switch Theory holds that the Big Bang of evolution, 520 million years ago, was triggered by the evolution of the eye. This is the uncontested solution to the most dramatic event in the history of life, most famously supported by Francis Crick (co-discoverer of the structure of DNA). Today he works at Oxford University’s Templeton College. He is also Research Leader at The Natural History Museum, London and a Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Andrew Parker’s scientific research centres on the evolution of vision and on biomimetics – extracting good design from nature. He has copied the natural nanotechnology behind the metallic-like wings of butterflies and iridescence of hummingbirds to produce commercial products such as security devices (that can’t be copied) to replace holograms in credit cards and non-reflective surfaces for solar panels (providing a 10% increase in energy capture). Today he is commissioned by international car manufacturers and security companies.

He wrote the popular science books In the Blink of an Eye and Seven Deadly Colours (Simon & Schuster, UK; Perseus, US), and regularly speaks at literary/arts festivals as well as scientific institutions.

His The Genesis Enigma on the extraordinary correlation between the sequential events of creation as described in Genesis and scientific proof, was published in 2009 by Bantam Press in the UK and by William Morrow in the US.