Dr George McGavin


1954 -

Author, broadcaster and entomologist. Born in Glasgow, the son of artists, McGavin was raised in Edinburgh where he attended Daniel Stewart's College. He overcame a severe stammer to study zoology at the University of Edinburgh and completed his doctorate in entomology at Imperial College London. He spent 25 years lecturing at the University of Oxford, while also serving as assistant curator of entomology at the Museum of Natural History there. He left in 2007 to concentrate on his broadcasting work, but remains an honorary research associate at the museum, with a specialism in tropical insects. His television work includes The One Show, together with the Lost Land of the Jaguar (2008), Lost Land of the Volcano (2009) and Lost Land of the Tiger (2010), Afterlife: The Science of Decay (2011), The Dark (2012) and Miniature Britain (2012), all for the BBC. He has also acted as a consultant and scientific advisor for other television series, including David Attenborough's Life in the Undergrowth. McGavin is a Fellow of the Linnean Society and of the Royal Geographical Society. He regularly gives public lectures on insects, ecology, evolution and conservation, and has several insect species named in his honour, including the cockroach Allacta mcgavini. In 2017, he was diagnosed with a rare skin cancer and took part in a moving BBC documentary A Year to Save my Life to warn others of the dangers. Although the cancer had spread, McGavin has responded remarkably to new inhibitor drugs.


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