Ursula W. Goodenough

Ursula W. Goodenough is a Professor of Biology at Washington University in St. Louis and author of the bestselling book Sacred Depths of Nature. This highly regarded book has resulted in her teaching the paradigm of Religious Naturalism and the Epic of Evolution around the world and also her participation in television productions on PBS and The History Channel, as well as NPR radio broadcasting.

Dr. Goodenough earned her M.A. in zoology from Columbia Universityand completed her Ph.D. at Harvard University. Goodenough was an assistant and associate professor of biology at Harvard from 1971-1978 before moving to Washington University where she wrote three editions of a widely adopted textbook, Genetics. Goodenough joined the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) in 1989 and served as its president for four years. She also served as president of The American Society for Cell Biology. She has presented papers and seminars on science and religion to numerous audiences and serves on the editorial board of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science.

In 2002, Ursula Goodenough was a member of a panel invited to participate in seminars on Western science for the Dalai Lama and his inner circle of monk-scholars. She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.