Merlin Sheldrake
Making fungal networks legible to people who will never own a microscope, without flattening the science to do it.
The record
- Standing
- active practice
- Based
- Society for the Protection of Underground Networks
- Trained as
- PhD in tropical ecology, Cambridge, on underground fungal networks in the tropical forests of Panama; predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
- Roles
- Research associate at Oxford University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; UK Policy Lead at the Fungi Foundation; Chief Impact Officer at the Society for the Protection of Underground Networks.
- Recognition
- Royal Society Book Prize and the Wainwright Prize, for Entangled Life.
Standing is this studio’s placement of the work, not a ranking of the person, and it is the one line here that is a judgement rather than a cited fact.
The work
Entangled Life did the thing popular science rarely manages: it carried a genuinely unfamiliar biology to a general audience while keeping the uncertainty in. The book is careful about what is known, what is inferred, and what is still argued over, which is why working mycologists cite it rather than wince at it.
His own research was on fungal networks in Panamanian tropical forest, which is the difference between a science writer and a scientist writing.
The policy work is arguably the more consequential half now. Fungi are largely absent from conservation frameworks, which protect plants and animals and treat the third kingdom as scenery; SPUN and the Fungi Foundation exist to change that, and the mapping work is producing the data such a change would need.
Where to read them
Sources for this record
Corrections
This record was assembled from the sources above, and nothing in it was inferred to fill a gap. If it is about you and it is wrong, or you would rather not be listed, write and it changes.