Adam Rutherford

Adam Rutherford is a geneticist at University College London (UCL), where he teaches evolution, genetics, the history of race science and eugenics, and science communication. He lectures extensively to academic and public audiences around the world.

One of BBC Radio 4's most pre-eminent broadcasters, Adam's six-part series Bad Blood: The Story of Eugenics won the audio Kavli/AAAS Science Journalism Gold Award. He also presents Radio 4's flagship programme Start the Week, and was previously the host of Inside Science for eight years. His popular series The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry has been on air for a decade. He is also a regular guest on Lauren Laverne's BBC 6 Music show and The Infinite Monkey Cage with Brian Cox and Robin Ince.

He has contributed to a host of other Radio 4 documentaries on subjects ranging from the inheritance of intelligence, MMR and autism, and epigenetics, to human evolution, astronomy and art, science and cinema, scientific fraud, and the evolution of sex.

Adam has written over a hundred articles for the Guardian, the Observer, The Telegraph, The Times, Wired, Focus, Tes and elsewhere. In his academic writing, he has written extensively on race, genetics, evolution and trust in science.

Adam's first children's book, Where Are You Really From?, was published in 2023. Prior to this, he wrote seven books, most recently Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics in 2022. This followed his hugely successful How to Argue With a Racist, a Sunday Times Best Seller. Other books include The Book of Humans: The Story of How We Became Us and A Brief History of Everyone Who Ever Lived. His first book, Creation, was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. His next book, Higher, Faster, Stronger, is about the science of sport, and will be out when he finishes writing it.