Schrodinger in 2018 — Mike Murphy

#whatislife75
Sep 4, 2018 · 4 min read

In September of 1993, the fiftieth anniversary of Schrödinger’s 1943 What is Life? lectures were commemorated with a conference held at Trinity College Dublin. That conference was called ‘What is Life? The Next Fifty Years’. Now, 25 years later on, at the 75th anniversary of Schrödinger’s lectures we will again celebrate with a conference entitled Schrödinger at 75 — The Future of Biology. This seems a good opportunity to look back to the 1993 symposium and consider why Schrödinger is still important and relevant for biologists today, and why we should again commemorate the legacy of his 1943 talks.

The 50th anniversary meeting in 1993 brought together an eminent gathering of scientists, including three Nobel laureates. The talks covered topics such as ‘What remains of the twentieth century’s biology’ by Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen, the ‘Origin of Life’ by the eminent evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, and a related talk on the origin of life entitled ‘RNA without protein, or protein without RNA’ by Nobel Laureate Christian de Duve. The influence of the question posed by Schrödinger was considered in a talk ‘What is life? a problem in history’ by the well-known evolutionary biologist and popular science writer Stephen Jay Gould. Related to this, Stuart Kauffman talked on ‘The persistent question: what is life?’. Other lectures focused on problems in biology such as ‘The evolution of human inventiveness’ by Jared Diamond and on embryonic development ‘Development: could one generate a dinosaur or an angel?’ by Lewis Wolpert. To honour Schrödinger the physical scientist, there were also talks that explored what the physical sciences had to teach us about the future of biology by the famous mathematician and cosmologist Roger Penrose on ‘Why we need new physics to understand the mind’, and from the chemist Leslie Orgel on ‘molecular replication and aperiodic crystals’. Finally, one of the remaining great problems in biology, the nature of consciousness, was explored by the Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman is his lecture on ‘Physics life and mind: is it possible to build a perception machine?’

The 1993 meeting was regarded as a great success — and great fun to organise and attend! So, why do we need to have another meeting 25 years later? There are several reasons; among them is the fact that the influence of Schrödinger on biology is still very much alive. Of course, the most famous legacy of the What is Life? lecture is the prediction of the physical nature of the hereditary material as an ‘aperiodic crystal’. This was gloriously made a reality in 1953 through the work of Watson, Crick, Franklin and Wilkins. But in considering this astonishing success we should not forget that in his lectures Schrödinger also focused on the energetic underpinnings of life, stating that life fed on ‘negentropy’ and this insight has underpinned much of modern biochemistry and bioenergetics. In many ways the answer to the question ‘What is life?’ is that life is a process that can couple the information transfer from one generation to the next (‘aperiodic crystal’) with the use of free energy to maintain the organisation essential for a living organism (‘negentropy’). Now, although we more or less understand the nature of how extant life on earth uses energy and genetic information, it is still important to understand how these two great principles of biology arose to enable life to emerge on earth and perhaps on other planets.

The origin of life is a part of the unfinished business of What is Life?. The other unknown discussed in the original What is Life? lectures is the nature of consciousness and in many ways this is the last great frontier in biology now that we understand, in principle at least, heredity and development. Providing a physical understanding of the emergence of consciousness would most likely lead to a greater revolution in how we see ourselves that caused by our understanding of the structure of DNA. The nature of consciousness remains unfinished business from Schrödinger’s lectures.

A major innovative feature of Schrödinger’s original lectures was of a physicist going out on a limb to speculate about the future of biology. We tried to recapture this spirit in 1993, but often the focus of the talks was more on the achievements of the past, rather than the future. So, one of our goals for the 2018 conference is to encourage the speakers to look to the future and to take risks in speculating on future challenges and predictions. To help bring this about our speakers for 2018 include not only eminent established scientists (including six Nobel laureates), but also a number of younger scientists who are clearly emerging as leaders in their fields. We hope that this eclectic mixture will lead to an exciting and stimulating meeting that recaptures the spirit as Schrödinger’s original lectures back in 1943.

Among the speakers are Linda Partridge, who is an eminent evolutionary biologist whose research focuses on the nature of ageing. As our society ages Linda’s work in unravelling the mechanisms of ageing will have a major impact on how we face this looming crisis. Nick Lane is a bioenergeticist who is also well known for his popular science books. His recent work has focused on the energetic requirements for the origin of life. Bernard Feringa was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Chemistry; his groundbreaking work on building ‘Nanomachines’ makes him an ideal person to talk about the future of chemistry.

Mike Murphy (University of Cambridge) is an organiser of Schrödinger at 75 — The Future of Biology. The conference takes place on Sept 5th and 6th in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and you can watch it live here.

#whatislife75

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Marking 75 years since Schrödinger's iconic 'What is Life?' lectures at Trinity College Dublin.