Intelligent design is topic of biologist's April 10 lecture

Mark Farmer

Skidmore?s Distinguished Science Lecture Series continues Thursday, April 10, when Professor Mark Farmer, chair of the Department of Cellular Biology at the University of Georgia, gives a talk titled ?Intelligent Design: The Evolution of the Creationist Movement.? Free and open to the public, the lecture begins at 7 p.m. in Gannett Auditorium of Palamountain Hall.

In his talk Farmer will demonstrate the ways in which primitive cells show how evolution occurs. He has given similar presentations internationally, before the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research and at the International Society of Evolutionary Protistologists in Wroclaw, Poland, and debated the ?evolution vs. creation? issue at the 2005 American Vision Worldview Conference in Georgia. Farmer is a self-described ?Scientist of Faith? who feels that there should be no inherent conflict between an acceptance of basic evolutionary theory and one?s personal beliefs.

An honors graduate of Colgate University, where he earned a B.A. degree in biology, Farmer obtained a Ph.D. degree in botany and plant physiology at Rutgers University. He has been at the University of Georgia since 1993, serving more than a decade as director of the Center for Advanced Ultrastructural Research and, since 2005, as professor and chair of the Department of Cellular Biology.

He has published articles in such academic journals as Evolution, the Journal of Phycology, and the European Journal of Protistology, and has spoken before international meetings of cellular biologists and the international society of Evolutionary Protistologists.
Farmer is a member of the Society of Protozoologists, and is past president of both
the International Society for Evolutionary Protistology and the Phycological Society of
America.