John Scotney Author

John Scotney is an English lecturer, writer, and broadcaster. After reading history at the University of Cambridge, he taught for two years at the University of Delhi in India. Since returning to England he has combined teaching with writing and producing for the BBC. He has taught at the University of Westminster and on courses accredited by the Universities of Manchester and Kent, and for San Diego University, California, he taught a summer school on the history of ideas, with particular relevance to science. He has edited a History of World Literature and contributed to many journals, magazines, and textbooks. Among numerous programs he has written and produced for the BBC are a series about the scientific and technological background to the Industrial Revolution, and for Radio 3 "Our Green Survival Kit," which told of the continuing role of phytochemistry in medicine. His Radio 4 program, "A Mind of Universal Sympathy," was a portrait of Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who anticipated many of his grandson' s ideas.