The deep chemistry of life and death
What brings the Earth to life and our own lives to an end? The answer isn’t 42, but the Krebs cycle. We learn this as simple reactions generating cellular energy, but not that this cycle can also run backwards, turning gases into living matter. Or this could be how life on Earth began. Or that this tension between creation and destruction – between burning organic molecules and forming them anew – underpins ageing and diseases like cancer. And this tension might underlie subjective feelings. I will show how the Krebs cycle connects all these amazing things.
225th Lecture Series Royal Philosophical Society of Glasgow
Date: Wednesday 07 October 2026
Time: 19:30 - 21:00
Venue: Charles Wilson Building, Lecture Theatre 201
Category: Public lectures
Speaker: Professor Nick Lane, UCL
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry and Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origins and Evolution (CLOE) at University College London. His research is on how energy flow has shaped the trajectory of evolution from the origin of life to the evolution of complex eukaryotic cells and the emergence of traits such as sex, ageing and even consciousness.
Nick has published more than 130 papers in leading journals including Nature, Cell and Science, and written five celebrated books which have been translated into 30 languages. He was awarded the Royal Society Science Book Prize for Life Ascending in 2010 and the Michael Faraday Prize for excellence in communicating science to UK audiences in 2016.Bill Gates called The Vital Question “an amazing inquiry into the origins of life”.