John Speakman

John Speakman
Residence	United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Fields	Energetics and Obesity
Institutions	University of Aberdeen
Notable awards	FRSE (2004) FMed Sci (2008) FRSA (2009)

Professor John Speakman FRSE FRSB FMedSci is a British biologist working at the University of Aberdeen, Institute of Biological and Environmental Sciences, for which he was Director from 2007 to 2011. He leads the University's Energetics Research Group, which is one of the world's leading groups using doubly labeled water (DLW) to investigate energy expenditure and balance in animals. During the mid-1980s and early 1990s, Speakman made many contributions to the development of the DLW method, culminating in the book "Doubly labelled water: theory and practice", published in 1997 that remains the standard reference work for applications of this methodology in humans and other animals. He was awarded Doctor of Science (DSc) degrees by both the University of Aberdeen (1996) and University of Stirling (2009). In 2011 Speakman took up a joint position at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Genetics and Developmental Biology, in Beijing, as a 1000 talents Professor, where he heads the molecular energetics group which is part of the State key laboratory of molecular developmental biology. In 2016 he received a Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award from the Royal Society of London.

Speakman is well known for his work on obesity, in particular for criticising a long-established theory for obesity known as the thrifty gene hypothesis. His alternative hypothesis proposes that the modern distribution of obese phenotypes arose via the release from predation and random genetic drift: the 'drifty gene hypothesis'. This idea is controversial and has been criticised by others that support the original thrifty gene hypothesis.

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