Professor Lord Krebs to give the annual Linacre Lecture at St John’s College

This year’s Linacre Lecture will be given by Professor Lord Krebs on 5 May in the Old Divinity School at St John’s College.

Professor Lord Krebs Kt, FRS, FMedSci, ML will be giving the 2016 Linacre Lecture at St John’s. The lecture is entitled ‘How what we eat can help save the planet and our health’.

The lecture will focus on diet, which is now recognised as one of the largest contributors to ill health and avoidable premature death in the UK. Professor Lord Krebs will discuss whether people will actually be able to change their eating habits to resolve these problems, as well as their environmental impact.

Professor Lord Krebs is a renowned zoologist. He was Principal of Jesus College Oxford from 2005-15, and currently sits on the UK Climate Change Committee and chairs its Adaptation Sub Committee. In his earlier career he was the first Chairman of the Food Standards Agency (2000–05), Chief Executive of the Natural Environment Research Council (1994-99), Royal Society Research Professor at Oxford University (1988-2005), Lecturer in Zoology at Oxford, and at the University of Wales, and Assistant Professor in the Institute of Resource Ecology at the University of British Columbia. Between 2010 and 2014 he chaired the Science and Technology Select Committee in the House of Lords, and in 2012 he was President of the British Science Association. 

He has published numerous books, including the standard text-book in his field, An Introduction to Behavioural Ecology, and over 200 scientific papers and reviews. He is a member of the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, the US Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the German National Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina. He has received 17 Honorary Degrees and numerous awards for his research, and he was knighted in 1999.

The Linacre Lecture will take place at 5pm on Thursday 5 May in the Main Lecture Theatre, the Old Divinity School, St John’s College, and the lecture will be preceded by tea at 4.15pm. All members of the University are invited to attend.