George, a published scientific writer at just 14 years of age

We would like to massively congratulate George in Year 10, who has published a scientific article in the journal ‘Biologia’ – New insights into Romanian Chilopoda’. Seeing one of our students achieve something so marvellous is what motivates us to be better every day.

‘At first glance, centipedes don’t really seem to be a useful or charismatic area of research. However, they hold a key role in the complex processes happening in the soil beneath our feet that are at the basis of everything from pedology to agriculture. I personally chose to pursue their study only because I knew that it is a branch of life that is poorly understood’, said George, Year 10.

In Romania, with more than 100 centipede species there is much contradiction between specialist authors over the status, ecology or even morphology of many of them.’This is why it is important to take every poorly understood species into consideration in order to provide missing molecular and morphological data’. The centipede re-described, Clinopodes intermedius, was first recorded in 1969 in the ‘Macin Mountains’ in Dobrogea, southeastern Romania, and for George, ‘to find it in a new locality, here on the outskirts of Bucharest, was quite surprising. It indicates a highly disjunct distribution which highlights the need for future ecological surveys in Romania and elsewhere in the world.

‘Writing the paper itself was very challenging, as authors must meet the strict standards imposed by each journal they choose to publish in. I am very grateful for the support offered to me by the teachers that read early drafts and provided feedback on matters of grammar and clarity. Without the support of my family and the school community, I couldn’t have even dreamed of being a published author so soon.’, George said.

You could find more about his work here: https://bit.ly/2YdepeO

Well done, George!

May 2019

Please note that the British School of Bucharest is not responsible for the content on external pages and, as usual, we advise you to monitor your children’s online activity.