The alumni magazines that come to my house rarely get much more than a quick glance, but this month the Rochester Review has an interesting interview with H. Allen Orr, one of the leading evolutionary biologists working in the field of speciation. Orr is about to receive a major prize in the field, the Darwin-Wallace medal. The alumni magazine used this occasion to get Orr to explain why Darwin matters, and how genomic technologies are changing the field:

Darwin lived in the age of discovery. People were going out on those voyages and sending all these bizarre organisms back to London or back to Paris. In a way, what is going on now is similar. We suddenly have this age of data-rich discovery. Data are just pouring in. I think it’s fair to say that we haven’t had a Darwin yet. Nobody has taken that new data and said, “Oh, boy, here’s the big surprise.” And maybe we won’t. But certainly as a tool, it’s just been amazing.