[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/ferris.jpg” caption=”James Ferris”]The potential for life in other areas of our galaxy and solar system will be explored in the third in a series of five public lectures tackling origins research.

During the free lecture, From the Big Bang to the Origins of Life, in Rm. 120 of Togo Salmon Hall Monday, Dec. 1 at 8 p.m., James Ferris, a chemistry professor and director of the New York Centre for Studies on the Origins of Life at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York, will discuss the processes that led to the formation of the elements, galaxies, solar systems and planets.

Ferris will take the audience through scenarios for the origins of life including the proposal that an RNA world preceded the DNA-protein world, which is the basis of life on Earth today.

The laboratory investigation of the synthesis of RNA under primitive Earth conditions is the current focus of Ferris' research.

Ferris has been the chair of the chemistry department, president of the International Society for Studies in the Origins of Life (ISSOL), and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In 1996 he was awarded the Oparin Medal of ISSOL for “the best sustained scientific research program in the origin of life.”

The Origins Public Lecture Series is designed to bring world-class researchers to McMaster to give free public talks in areas of fundamental scientific research and broad public interest. The multidisciplinary lectures aim to focus in a non-technical way on some of the foremost questions of our day.

These lectures are just one aspect of a proposed new Origins Institute (OI) at McMaster whose scientific research focus will be to create and foster interdisciplinary research on these interrelated origins themes.

For more information visithttp://www.physics.mcmaster.ca/currentevents/origins/.