Iain McCalman was born in Nyasaland in 1947, schooled in Zimbabwe and did his higher education in Australia. His last book, Darwin’s Armada (Penguin, 2009) won three prizes and was the basis of the TV series, Darwin’s Brave New World. He is a Fellow of three Learned Academies and is a former President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He was Director of the Humanities Research Centre, ANU, from 1995-2002 and won the inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Prize at ANU for Teaching Excellence. He is a former Federation Fellow and currently a Research Professor in history at the University of Sydney and co-Director of the Sydney Environment Institute. His new book, The Reef – A Passionate History, from Captain Cook to Climate Change, will be published by Penguin in Australia in November and by Farrar, Strauss and Giroux in the USA in May 2014. He was made Officer of the Order of Australia in 2007 for services to history and the humanities.