2018 Ljungdahl Lecture

Energy and Matter at the Origin of Life: 

Nick Lane, a faculty member at the University College London, will present the 2018 Ljungdahl Lecture April 27 at 3:30 p.m. in Room C127 of the Davison Life Sciences Building. Open free to the public, Lane will discuss “Energy and Matter at the Origin of Life.”

Renowned as an excellent communicator, Lane is an evolutionary biochemist and writer in the genetics, evolution and environment department of University College London. 

His work focuses on the origin of life, particularly the origin and evolution of eukaryotes. A founding member of the UCL Consortium for Mitochondrial Research, Lane leads the UCL Research Frontiers Origins of Life Program. 

The author of four critically acclaimed books on evolutionary biochemistry, his Life Ascending won the 2010 Royal Society Prize for Science Books, while The Vital Question was praised by Bill Gates as “an amazing inquiry into the origins of life.”

Lane was awarded the inaugural Provost’s Venture Research Prize for his research on evolutionary biochemistry and bioenergetics in 2009.

The lecture is named in honor of a long-time and much-honored UGA faculty member, Lars G. Ljungdahl. He and his late wife, Despy Karlas, a professor of piano and noted performer with the Hugh Hodgson School of Music, provided funding for the lecture series.

Ljungdahl came to UGA in 1967 and immediately began building a reputation as an outstanding research scientist and teacher. As the Georgia Power Distinguished Professor of Biotechnology, he received numerous honors, including fellowships in the American Academy of Microbiology and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and foreign membership in the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. He worked with the Georgia Research Alliance for 10 years and served as a member of the state of Georgia Governor’s Advisory Council on Science and Technology from 1992-1996.

Ljungdahl was editor-in-chief for the journal Applied and Environmental Microbiology from 1986-1995 and director of the Georgia Biotechnology Center from 1994-2001. He also served as director of the Center for Biological Resource Recovery before his retirement.