Speaker
,Author
Nick Lane
“One begins to wonder if all the most interesting problems in physics are now in biology.”
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His research focuses on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origin and Evolution (CLOE). He is the author of four acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide.
“He is an original researcher and thinker and a passionate and stylish populariser. His theories are ingenious, breathtaking in scope, and challenging in every sense… what Lane is proposing, if correct, will be as important as the Copernican revolution.” – The Guardian
“One begins to wonder if all the most interesting problems in physics are now in biology.”
Nick Lane is Professor of Evolutionary Biochemistry in the Department of Genetics, Evolution and Environment at University College London. His research focuses on the way that energy flow has shaped evolution over 4 billion years, using a mixture of theoretical and experimental work to address the origin of life, the evolution of complex cells and downright peculiar behaviour such as sex. He was a founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, and is Co-Director of the UCL Centre for Life’s Origin and Evolution (CLOE). He is the author of four acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, which have sold more than 150,000 copies worldwide.
“He is an original researcher and thinker and a passionate and stylish populariser. His theories are ingenious, breathtaking in scope, and challenging in every sense… what Lane is proposing, if correct, will be as important as the Copernican revolution.” – The Guardian
Nick Lane Videos
The Mystery of Life
If we find extraterrestrial life, will we recognise it as life at all?
A world of order and chaos
Challenging the second law of thermodynamics
Beyond the boundary
What comes after the afterlife?
The consciousness test
Is AI sentient?
Electricity creates consciousness
Why our idea of consciousness may be wrong
Nick Lane Articles
More Videos
Brave New Horizon
Where will technology lead the human race?
The Immortal Now
Can philosophy teach us how to die?
Emperor's New Genes
Are genes not the blueprint for life we imagined?
What happens to our bodies when we die?
Biologist Brooke Magnati reveals the secrets of decay
The Evolution of Desire
Do genetics explain all of human nature?
Defeating Aging
Do you want to live forever?
The New Bodies
Transhumanism: Rise of the Cyborgs
Orgasmatron
What can MRI scans of brains in orgasm tell us?
After Darwin
Is the age of selfish gene theory over?
Are Doctors Bad For Us?
Medicine, trust, and power
The Illusion of Race
How do we move on from race?
After Evolution
Is culture beyond genetics?
Doctors in the Age of Google
Is it time to rid ourselves of medical authority?
The Evolution of Suicide
Nicholas Humphrey | Self-killing's genetic history
Doctors and the Danger Industry
Can big data improve the effectiveness of drugs?
Life On The Edge
How can we halt society's existential crises?
Overcoming death
Does fearing death prevent us from fully living?
Why We Are Who We Are
The epigenetic revolution
Planet of the Clones
Should we clone human beings?
The Uniqueness of Humanity
Is evolution progress?
Genes, Cells, and Brains
Taking on the bioscience industry
A Paradigm of Health
What are the limits of western medicine?
The Naked Truth
How does the body in art relate to physical-being? Is nudity ever more than a sales tactic?
Cyborg Future
Microprocessors & nano-robots in the human body
Inside the Mind’s Eye
The Solitary Self - Darwin and the Selfish Gene
Your Life in the Balance
Should we trust doctors less than we do?
Documenting Death
Whose death is worth recording? | Brooke Magnanti
Docs in the Dock
What can we do about medical errors?
Are Hospitals Bad For Us?
Social justice impacts our health more than medicine
Why Genes Are Not Selfish and People Are Nice
Neoliberalism makes for crude science
Morality, Hypocrisy and Health
Drugs and Western imperialism
Sex, Science, and Stereotypes
Why women have evolved differently from men
How Science Tells Us Who We Are
George Ellis | Nature vs nurture
Designing Life
How to Live Forever
A future without morality
Medicine's Mistakes
Should we distrust medicine?
Meat, Metal, Code
Human and Superhuman
Is the pursuit of eternal youth fair on the young?
Should We Change Our Genes?
Is ‘gene-doping’ a threat to humanity?
The Mystery of Life
If we find extraterrestrial life, will we recognise it as life at all?
Stem Cells and the Future of Medicine
Can stem cells ethically transform medicine?
Trust Me, I'm Google
Medicine in a digital age
The return of eugenics?
The danger of eugenics
Science to the Rescue
How do we decide on the truth?
Trust, science and neutrality
Is science the gold standard of objective truth?
The medicine myth
The failure of medicalising philosophy
How we became who we are
Politics in the nature vs nurture debate
The agents of life
Should we abandon the idea of individual organisms
Extra-terrestrial life
Are we the sharpest cookie in the jar?
More Articles
CRISPR's Brave New World
Science is based in metaphor
Rewriting the code of life
The moral case for eugenics?
The false promise of human gene editing
A new paradigm to understand pain
Euthanasia isn't a slippery slope
Looking at genes through a human lens
The mystery and origins of play
Biology's Uncertainty Principle
The fight for the future of biology
Nature didn't make us human, culture did
From Darwin to Derrida: evolution as interpretation
Too much pleasure causes pain
How science makes politics absurd
The ocean is the engine of the Earth
The microorganism that shaped humanity
We risk turning life into an illness
The Brave New World of synthetic humans
The post-antibiotic apocalypse is here
The mystery of living things
A new theory of matter may help explain life
The mind-body problem is ruining our health
Suspended Ethics?
Entering the Soul Niche
A New Science of Life
The Persecution of Heretics
Who First into the Ark?
An Enemy of The Open Society
Life, agency, and the evolution of free will