Distinguished Professor Hamish Spencer FRSNZ is an accomplished researcher and teacher, with a genuine commitment to bring science into the wider community. His work encompasses a wide range of topics in evolutionary biology, from mathematical models and molecular-genetic techniques used to infer evolutionary trees, to questions in public health and the history of genetics.
From 2012 to 2015, Hamish served as director of the Allan Wilson Centre, a multi-institutional research consortium, one of the New Zealand government’s centres of research excellence. As part of that organization’s outreach activities, he led award-winning programmes partnering scientists and local communities that were transformative for both parties. For five years he was science advisor to New Zealand’s science ministry.
Hamish presented a successful bid to bring the world’s premier history-of-science conference, the International Congress of History of Science and Technology to New Zealand in 2025. He was elected to Fellowship of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi in 2009 and awarded that society’s science-communication prize, the Callaghan Medal, in 2016.