Craig Venter
“What is Life?”
On Thursday, 12th July one of the landmark events of 20th Century science will be celebrated and reinterpreted for the 21st Century as part of the Science in the City programme of ESOF2012.
In February, 1943 one of the most distinguished scientists of the 20th Century, Erwin Schrödinger, delivered a seminal lecture, entitled ‘What is Life?’, under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, in Trinity College, Dublin. The lecture presented far-sighted ideas on how hereditary information could be encoded in a chemical structure (aperiodic crystal) in living cells. Schrödinger’s book (1944) of the same title is considered to be a scientific classic. The book was cited by Crick and Watson as one of the inspirations which ultimately led them to unravel the structure of DNA in 1953, a breakthrough which won them the Nobel prize.
Such was the significance of the lecture at the time, that the then Taoiseach (Irish Prime Minister), Éamon de Valera, attended the lecture and an account of it featured in the 5th April 1943, issue of Time magazine.
Recent advances in genetics and synthetic biology mean that it is now timely to reconsider the fundamental question posed by Schrödinger 70 years ago. Dr. J. Craig Venter (ESOF 2012 Keynote speaker), one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and a pioneer of synthetic biology, is uniquely qualified to revisit Schrödinger’s question.
He will do so in a lecture entitled ‘What is Life in the 21st Century?’ on the evening of Thursday, 12th July in Dublin.
This unique event will connect an important episode in Ireland’s scientific heritage with the frontier of contemporary research.
