K. J. P. Lowe is Professor of Renaissance History and Culture at Queen Mary, University of London.Dr Geoffrey Davies is a Senior Fellow in the Research School of Earth Sciences at the Australian National University. He is an internationally honoured geophysicist who has been at the forefront of mantle convection studies for over three decades. He is also the author of the successful graduate textbook Dynamic Earth: Plates, Plumes and Mantle Convection (Cambridge University Press, 1999), and over 100 scientific papers. He has been at the forefront of attempts to reconcile mantle geochemistry with mantle dynamics, and in exploring the implications for the thermal and tectonic evolution of the… Earth. Dr Davies was elected Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1990, and awarded the inaugural Augustus Love medal in geodynamics in 2005 by the European Geosciences Union.