Bard’s Honor Creates Tempest in a Teapot

William Shakespeare, picked as Britain’s man of the millennium, was hailed as an international superstar, but scientists felt Charles Darwin or Isaac Newton should have taken the prize. The choice of the playwright in a poll of BBC radio listeners--he edged World War II leader Winston Churchill--provoked a heated New Year debate about his perennial appeal. Darwin, famed for his evolution theories, came in fourth, just ahead of Newton, the mathematician and gravitational lawgiver. Professor Colin Blakemore confessed to voting twice for Darwin: “In the end, Darwin will be seen to have told us more about why we are the way we are,” he said.