Nine leading contemporary poets have written original poems in response to recent Royal Institution Discourses, given by nine leading contemporary scientists. The book of poems, and the CD of the poets reading them, have both been published in June 2002 by the Royal Institution of Great Britain in association with Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation (£5 for the paperback book and £8 for the CD, both available at the Royal Institution), entitled Discourses - Poems for the Royal Institution.

One of the nine scientists featured is Professor Mark W J Ferguson, of the University of Manchester. In response to Professor Ferguson's Royal Institution discourse entitled 'Scars, Sex and Alligators: unexpected discoveries in biomedical research and their commercial exploitation', leading contemporary poet Ruth Padel, has written a six part poem entitled Sex, Scars and Alligators. In this discourse of poems she covers many aspects of alligator biology, wound healing and scarring. Ruth Padel has won the UK National Poetry Competition and published previously five collections of poetry: her previous collection Rembrandt Would Have Loved You was short listed for the T. S. Elliott Prize. She invented and wrote the popular 'Sunday Poem' column for the Independent on Sunday and currently writes 'Wild Thing' a column in the Weekend section of The Times. Her fifteen minute reading of poetry on Mark Ferguson's research includes the poetic description of the wounds healing process which finishes:

'So, finally, you get a dense and bumpy mass
of fibre with few living cells: the scar'.