Craig Venter to give updated version of Schrödinger lectures

Leading scientist and genomic researcher Dr Craig Venter has expressed his “honour” at being invited to Dublin to recreate one…

Leading scientist and genomic researcher Dr Craig Venter has expressed his “honour” at being invited to Dublin to recreate one of the greatest moments in Irish scientific history.

Dr Venter will be in Ireland next month to give an important keynote address during the EuroScience Open Forum in Dublin.

He will deliver an updated version of a seminal scientific lecture series given in Dublin in 1943 by Nobel Prize winner Erwin Schrödinger, a lecture that inspired the researchers who went on to discover the structure of DNA.

Schrödinger gave his What is Life? talks under the auspices of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, which he helped to found along with then taoiseach Éamon de Valera.

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De Valera viewed the talk as being of such importance that he was present in the audience in the old physics lecture hall at Trinity College Dublin. The talks were reported in Time magazine and were later published in book form.

Dr Venter was invited to bring the talks into the 21st century for the EuroScience Open Forum in Dublin.

Dick Ahlstrom

Dick Ahlstrom

Dick Ahlstrom, a contributor to The Irish Times, is the newspaper's former Science Editor.