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DTSTAMP:20250209T200000Z
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CATEGORIES:Conferences / Seminars / Lectures
DTSTART:20250209T200000Z
DTEND:20250209T210000Z
SUMMARY:What can theoretical physics tell us about the origin and evolution of early life?
DESCRIPTION:
 Nigel Goldenfeld - What can theoretical physics 
 tell us about the origin and evolution of early 
 life?\n
 \n
 Abstract\n
 \n
 "Life on Earth 
 is wonderfully diverse, with a multitude of 
 life forms, structures and evolutionary mechanisms. 
 However, there are two aspects of life 
 that are universal - shared by all known organisms. 
 These are the genetic code, which governs 
 how DNA is converted into the proteins making 
 up your body, and the unexpected left-handedness 
 of the amino acids in your body. One 
 would expect that your amino acids were a mixture 
 of left and right-handed molecules, but 
 none are right-handed! In this talk, I describe 
 how these universal aspects of biology can 
 be understood as arising from evolution, but 
 generalized to an era where genes, species 
 and individuality had not yet emerged. I will 
 also discuss to what extent one can find general 
 principles of biology that can apply to 
 all life in the universe, and what this would 
 mean for the nascent field of astrobiology."\n
 \n
 Bio\n
 Nigel 
 Goldenfeld holds the Chancellor's 
 Distinguished Professorship in Physics 
 and joined the University of California, 
 San Diego, in fall 2021 after 36 years at the 
 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). 
 His research spans condensed matter theory, 
 the theory of living systems, hydrodynamics 
 and non-equilibrium statistical physics. 
 He received his PhD in theoretical physics from 
 the University of Cambridge in 1982, and 
 for the years 1982-1985 was a postdoctoral fellow 
 at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, 
 University of California at Santa Barbara, 
 where his work on the dynamics of snowflake growth 
 helped launch the modern theory of pattern 
 formation in nature. He joined the condensed 
 matter theory group at the Department of 
 Physics at UIUC in 1985, where his work was instrumental 
 to the discovery of d-wave pairing 
 in high temperature superconductors. In 1996, 
 he co-founded NumeriX, a company that develops 
 high-performance software for pricing and 
 risk managing derivative securities. He was 
 a founding member of the Institute for Genomic 
 Biology at UIUC, where he led the Biocomplexity 
 Group and directed the NASA Astrobiology 
 Institute for Universal Biology.  \n
 \n
 During 
 the COVID-19 pandemic, he pivoted from his 
 experience in mathematical modeling of bacteria 
 and viruses to computational epidemiology. 
 He has served on the editorial boards of several 
 journals, including The Philosophical Transactions 
 of the Royal Society, Physical Biology 
 and the International Journal of Theoretical 
 and Applied Finance. Selected honors include: 
 Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellow, University 
 Scholar of the University of Illinois, 
 the Xerox Award for research, the A. Nordsieck 
 award for excellence in graduate teaching 
 and the American Physical Society's Leo P. Kadanoff 
 Prize 2020. He is a Fellow of the American 
 Physical Society, a Fellow of the American 
 Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of 
 the Royal Society (UK) and a Member of the US 
 National Academy of Sciences.\n
 \n\n
 Price: free\n
 Sponsor: public\n
 Contact name: Bob Patterer\n
 Contact email: events@frib.msu.edu\n
 for more info visit the web at:\n 
 https://msu.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_2lTzhXZtScGiiRzT8H89Yg\n
LOCATION:Virtual
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