Professor of plant biochemistry at the University of Edinburgh, Anthony J. Trewavas investigates the role of calcium in the movement of signals from outside to inside cells during plant development. From his studies of how plants in the wild manipulate the signals they perceive, he has concluded that plants act in ways that optimize their chances of surviving and reproducing—behavior he defines as intelligence. Dr. Trewavas devised a test of phenotypic plasticity by inserting a gene, which produces a calcium-sensitive protein, from luminous jellyfish into a plant, which then responded to environmental stimuli with flashes of light. His subsequent research into how plants learn led him to the conclusion that plant intelligence is a factor in the evolutionary process that has been overlooked because orthodox science assumes intelligence requires mobility. Dr. Trewavas was educated at University College, London, where he earned his baccalaureate degree and, in 1964, was awarded a Ph.D. in biochemistry. After six years as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of East Anglia, he joined the Edinburgh faculty as a lecturer. He was named to his present position in 1990. Dr. Trewavas was the inaugural visiting professor at the Michigan State University Plant Research Laboratory in 1973 and has been a visiting lecturer at the National Academy of Sciences in Poland, the University of Illinois, the University of Alberta, the University of California, Davis, the University of Bonn, the University of North Carolina, the National University of Mexico, the University of Athens, the University of Milan, and the University of Santiago in Chile. A fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Society of Arts, the World Innovation Foundation, and the Centre for Future Studies, he is a member of Academia Europea and a life member of the American Society of Plant Physiologists. He has served as an advisor to NASA, the Australian Senior Fellowships Committee, the Australian Research Council, the United States/Israel Binational Science Committee, the Israel Science Foundation, the Swiss National Science Council, the United States Development Agency, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation. Formerly a member of the editorial boards of Plant Physiology and Botanica Acta, he currently serves on the editorial boards of Plant, Cell and Environment and Trends in Plant Science, as well as on the advisory editorial board of the Biochemical Journal. Dr. Trewavas is the author or co-author of more than 200 articles published in scientific journals and essays in volumes of collected works. He is the editor (with D. H. Jennings) of Plasticity in Plants (1986) and the author of Molecular and Cellular Aspects of Calcium in Plant Development, which was published in 1985 by Plenum Press.
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