J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series with Theoretical Physicist Professor Nigel D. Goldenfeld
Venue: Goodwin Hall (Virginia Tech), Blacksburg
Directions: Google Map Link
Date: Thursday, September 14, 2017
Time: 7:30 - 8:30 PM
Event Types: Speaking Engagements
Cost: Free

Description:
The Virginia Tech College of Science opens its J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series for the fall 2017 semester with Professor Nigel D. Goldenfeld, a theoretical physicist and U.S. National Academy of Sciences Member from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on Thursday, September 14, 2017 at room 190 Goodwin Hall.

As the J. Mark Sowers Distinguished Lecture Series inaugural speaker on biophysics, Professor Goldenfeld will talk about theoretical physics and its impact on the first 1 billion years of life on Earth.

“Life on Earth is wonderfully diverse, with a multitude of life forms, structures, and evolutionary mechanisms,” Goldenfeld said of his talk. “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.”

Goldenfeld will 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. He will 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.

Goldenfeld holds a Center for Advanced Study Professorship and a Swanlund Endowed Chair at Urbana-Champaign, and appointments in the Department of Physics and the Institute for Genomic Biology. He serves as director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute for Universal Biology at Urbana-Champaign and heads the Biocomplexity Group at the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology. Goldenfeld also founded the high-performance software company NumeriX, and wrote a graduate textbook considered a standard in the field of statistical mechanics. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The series is funded by J. Mark Sowers, a Richmond, Virginia-based businessman and longtime supporter of the College of Science. The lecture series is designed to serve as a forum to exchange new and innovative ideas in scientific fields, including physics, nanotechnology, and neuroscience. Of the lecture series, Sowers previously has said, “I hope that people will be inspired by the lecture series and to bring attention to Virginia Tech and its brilliant researchers for the advancement of fundamental physics.”

All talks are free and open to the public.

For more information, visit: http://www.science.vt.edu/sowers.html or call 540-231-8706.

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