RSE Gifford Seminar: Why is life the way it is? | In person

Join as experts and our audience unpack key themes from biochemist Professor Nick Lane’s upcoming Gifford Lecture at the University of Edinburgh.

Professor Lane explores the question: Why did complex life emerge the way it did? His lecture centres around all complex life being composed of the same type of cell, which arose just once in the four-billion-year history of life. The barrier to complexity was probably not genetic, but energetic.

With the Gifford Lecture approaching, this seminar discussion at the RSE offers a look at its central ideas and questions. If you’re curious about life’s origins, you're invited to join this conversation.

Audience questions and contributions are encouraged as we explore what Nick Lane’s arguments mean for philosophy, the origins of life, and the possibility of life beyond Earth.

This booking page is to attend this event in-person. To view online .

Speaker: Professor Nick Lane
Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Director of the Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE) at University College London.

Professor Lane's research focuses on how energy flow has shaped evolution from the origin of life to the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells and the emergence of traits such as sex, ageing and consciousness.

Nick has published more than 130 papers in leading journals including Nature, Cell and Science, and written five award-winning books. These have been translated into 30 languages and recognized by the Royal Society Science Book Prize (2010), the Biochemical Society Award (2015) and the Royal Society Faraday Prize (2016). Bill Gates called The Vital Question “an amazing inquiry into the origins of life”.

Panellist: Dr Sean McMahon
Reader in Astrobiology, University of Edinburgh

Sean McMahon is a senior academic and research scientist at the University of Edinburgh, where he co-directs the UK Centre for Astrobiology, leads the Planetary Palaeobiology Group and runs the UK’s first MSc programme in Astrobiology and Planetary Sciences. His research combines fieldwork, experiments, computer models and sample analysis (with instruments like those on Mars rovers) to explore early life on Earth, fossilization, and the search for life on Mars and beyond – work that often makes news headlines across the world. He has published more than 70 academic articles and is now writing his first popular science book.

Panellist: Professor Victoria Martin FRSE
Professor in Particle Physics, University of Edinburgh

Victoria Martin holds a personal chair in Collider Physics at the University of Edinburgh.

She leads the experimental particle physics research group at the University of Edinburgh of over 80 academics, researchers, technical staff and PhD students investigating what our Universe looks like at the smallest accessible scales.

Her own research focuses on observing the Higgs boson using data from the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. How is it made? How does it decay? Does it really give mass to other subatomic particles?

Chair: Professor Cait MacPhee
Professor of Biological Physics, University of Edinburgh

Professor Cait MacPhee is a molecular biophysicist with research interests in the application of physical methods to advance the understanding of biomolecules. She originally started her career in the biosciences, gaining a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry & Immunology at the University of Melbourne in 1994, before gradually moving across to physics during her career. She gained her PhD in Biophysics from Melbourne in 1999. Beyond her research activities, Cait is interested in the factors that influence girls towards studying science subjects and works with primary school teachers to increase their confidence in incorporating science into their teaching.

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