Scientist, medical doctor, engineer and former taxi driver Dr Karl Kruszelnicki will speak on Great Moments In Science in a free public lecture at the University of Queensland on Tuesday, October 20.
Now a top-selling author and science commentator, Dr Kruszelnicki (commonly known as Dr Karl) will give the University of Queensland Medical Society's E.S. Meyers Memorial Lecture in Mayne Hall at the St Lucia campus at 7.30pm.
Dr Karl said he would give the E.S. Meyers Memorial Lecture audience "a look at science, engineering and medicine that's deep and yet very funny".
"They'll laugh, they'll cry, they'll feel really happy," he said.
"I'll be explaining why it's safer for a cat to fall from 32 storeys than from eight storeys, and I'll also be talking about the importance of the colon in English scientific papers."
Dr Karl has worked as a physicist, biomedical engineer, roadie for bands (including Bo Diddley and Slim Dusty), car mechanic, taxi driver, hospital scientific officer, film maker, TV weatherman and medical doctor in a hospital.
He has degrees in physics and mathematics, biomedical engineering and medicine and surgery and has also studied several non-degree years at various universities in astrophysics, computer science and philosophy.
Dr Karl is the Julius Sumner Miller Fellow at the University of Sydney in the Science Foundation of the Physics Department.
His career in radio began in 1981 when he wrote and presented a radio program called Great Moments In Science to pay his way through medical school.
The show won two Australian Hi-Fi FM Awards in the education category and was still running in 1995. Since then he has been a regular writer, presenter and guest on radio programs around the country.
He was a writer and presenter for the opening series of Quantum in 1985 and has been a science reporter on television ever since (The Midday Show, Good Morning Australia).
Dr Karl's publications run from Electroretinography - an Assessment of Techniques to Flying Lasers, Robofish and Cities of Slime - and other brain-bending science moments.
He has published 17 books and his 13th book, Pigeon Poo, the Universe and Car Paint - and other awesome science moments, helped make him the best-selling popular science author in Australia.
His awards include the Grafton Elliot Smith Memorial Prize for Anatomy, the Alexander James Scholarship for Community Medicine and the Michael Daley Award for Science Technology and Engineering Journalism (best entry, best radio entry).
The E.S. Meyers Memorial Lecture honours the memory of Professor Errol Solomon Meyers, co-founder of the University's Faculty of Medicine. Each year a prominent figure delivers the lecture. Previous lecturers have included Nobel laureate and University graduate Professor Peter Doherty and British author Lord Jeffrey Archer.
Entry is free but by ticket only. Tickets are available from the UQMS from October 1.
For more information contact Simone Ferguson (telephone 07 3365 5261 or facsimile 07 3365 5595).
