Craig Venter Lecture ‘What is Life? A 21st Century Perspective’ Video Now Online

Jul 24, 2012

One of the landmark events of 20th century science was 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 delivered a lecture entitled, ‘What is Life? A 21st century perspective’ recreating the Irish event that inspired the discovery of the structure of DNA.

http://youtu.be/qi2MhsUSu0U

To view more videos of this lecture with the accompanying slides please click here.  

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.

Professor Luke O’Neill, Academic Director of the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute and Professor of Biochemistry at the School of Biochemistry and Immunology chaired the lecture. The Taoiseach, Enda Kenny, TD attended the event in the Public Theatre which had a full capacity. Nobel Laureate Dr James Watson responded at the end of the lecture.

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

Prof Patrick Cunningham, Chair of ESOF2012, An Taoiseach Enda Kenny TD, Dr Craig Venter, Founder, Chairman and President of the J. Craig Venter Institute with Dr Patrick Prendergast, Provost of Trinity College Dublin before the lecture by Dr Craig Venter entitled ‘What is Life?A 21st Century Perspective’ in TCD