Tijs Goldschmidt (b. 1953) is a writer and essayist, with a background in evolutionary biology. His most famous book, Darwin’s Dreampond (1994) was shortlisted for the AKO Literature Prize and was awarded the prestigious Science Prize from the Dutch Organization for Scientific Research. It was translated into Chinese, German, English, French, Italian, Japanese and Polish. The New York Times called it ‘both unusual and eminently readable’.
(Prometheus, 1994, 286 pagina's)
‘This is not a book about a scientist who travels through Africa,’ comments Tijs Goldschmidt. ‘Evolution in Real Time would be a better subtitle, because that is what the book is about: watching evolution take place.’
(Athenaeum-Polak & Van Gennep, 2022, 223 pagina's)
Goldschmidt’s essays have been dubbed ‘Goldschmidt Variations’ in the past. Nothing is ever as it seems in them; culture and evolution always turn out to be more connected than you might initially suspect. In an essay on the digitization of texts, for example, the biologist looks for parallels between copying DNA and the increasingly precise copying and distribution of texts (‘cultural evolution’). In another essay, he links a botanical art installation to the spread of tulip varieties to the migration patterns of immigrants. Goldschmidt’s essays are delightfully erudite, nimble and associative.
