Inspiring minds young and old

There is no doubt in my mind that London's Natural History Museum is the best museum of its kind in the world. It is a shrine to creationary evolution that everyone should visit at least once.

And the superb new £27 million Darwin Centre, which opens to the public on Monday, will make it even better. It is claimed to be the most significant development the museum has undertaken since it moved to South Kensington in 1881.

It solves one of the problems that faces most of the world's great museums, the fact that the often immense collections they hold remain, for the most part, in storage where the public can't see them. The idea behind the Darwin Centre is to open up the vaults of the Natural History Museum. Now, for the first time, the public will be able to go behind the scenes and see 80 per cent of the world's finest collection of 54 million animals and plants, which have previously only been seen by scientists. These include those collected by Captain Cook on his 1768 voyage to Australia as well as by Darwin on The Beagle. And as you walk around the museum, you'll be able to see the scientists working. You can interact with them too, and see for yourself how this collection helps to address contemporary issues such as the quality of our air and the causes of disease.

So take your kids along - this is the sort of place than could inspire in them a life-long passion for natural history. This has to be a good thing, as the study of natural history has suffered recently in schools and universities. Indeed, students no longer study for botany and zoology A-levels. These days everyone seems to study genetic modification.

I hope the sight of the millions of specimens on display wilI prick young people's curiosity. I hope it will open the minds of children and adults alike and create a lot more potential Darwins - because it is both an essential and very rewarding job.

Recently, as I was putting together my autobiography Jolly Green Giant, I was thinking what a charmed life I've led. I've seen more of the world than Wallace and Darwin put together. And I was allowed to teach people. (Only I stepped out of line and said we've got to do something about what we're doing to the Earth --which is why you haven't seen me on television for eight years!)

And if it could encourage kids to become taxonomists - the scientists who specialise in classifying organisms - even better, as this country has a terrible shortage. I often get letters asking, 'Can you recommend someone who can identify this or that strange plant?' and I have to say no.

And if we haven't got someone who can identify, say, the dinoflagelates (a form of marine algae), which are causing some of the immense pollution problems around the world, we're in trouble. And how can you genetically modify organisms when you cannot put a name to the organism in the first place? Imagine if Charles Darwin and Alfred Russell Wallace - who wrote the first paper together on the origin of the species - were little boys today. They could go to the Darwin Centre and marvel at the things they had to travel the world to find. It's almost like opening their brains and peering inside. And it is sobering to think that many of the organisms that were alive and vibrant in their millions when they were alive simply don't exist anymore - except in the Darwin Centre.

Ifirst went to the Natural History Museum when I was five. As a kid I'd ride my bike up to London, park it outside the museum, go in and spend the day there. Perhaps if it had had these fantastic facilities then I would have realised what I wanted to do much earlier. As it was, I didn't become a natural historian until I was 19 or 20. (Believe it or not, I had originally wanted to be a ballet dancer, while my parents wanted me to be a doctor). It wasn't until I finally passed A-level chemistry after failing four times that I decided biology was for me. I then worked as a laboratory technician in Surrey, where I met two amazing guys, who said, 'You've got a brain - use it.' Five years later I was a university don.

One thing that cheeses me off is that on the day the Darwin Centre opens, I'll be at the other end of the country. But I will go. Perhaps I'll travel by bicycle and park it outside, like I did all those years ago.