What is Life? – a 21st Century Perspective

Jul 12, 2012

One of the landmark events of 20th century science will be celebrated and reinterpreted for the 21st century in Trinity College Dublin on the evening of Thursday 12 July as part of the Science in the City programme of ESOF2012.Dr Craig Venter, one of the leaders of the Human Genome Project in the 1990s and a pioneer of synthetic biology will deliver a lecture entitled, ‘What is Life? A 21st century perspective’ recreating the Irish event that inspired the discovery of the structure of DNA.

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.

This unique event will connect an important episode in Ireland's scientific heritage with the frontier of contemporary research.

The lecture will be will be streamed live from the Public Theatre on the Trinity website later this evening at 7.30pm. If you would like to watch this historic webcast, please click http://www.onestream.tv/viewer/broadcast.aspx?id=1421

Viewing Instructions: Viewers on pc and Mac will require Silverlight to view this webcast.

To download go to :  http://www.microsoft.com/getsilverlight/Get-Started/Install/Default.aspx

and follow instructions.

Please note there is a capacity limit for viewers for this lecture. If for some reason you are unable to view it live, a recording of the lecture will be uploaded in the next few days.