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Nick Lane

Disciplines:
evolutionary biology/evolution
biology/origins of life
uk/ucl

Summary

British biochemist at UCL — author of Life Ascending, The Vital Question, Power, Sex, Suicide — who writes on the biochemical origins of life and the evolution of complex life with unusual depth and ambition.

Core Contribution

Creates the alkaline hydrothermal vent hypothesis for the origin of life as a biochemically rigorous account — Lane's The Vital Question argues that life originated in submarine alkaline hydrothermal vents (not Darwin's warm little pond) and provides the most detailed biochemical account of how the first cells could have formed.

Key Spikes & Highlights

  • Writes about biochemistry in a way that makes the origin of life feel like the most important unsolved problem in science — his prose combines technical accuracy with a sense of wonder that is unusual in biochemistry; his books have converted more non-biologists to caring about biochemistry than any other author
  • His Transformer (2022) argues that the Krebs cycle running in reverse was central to the origin of life — an unfashionable position that he defends with primary biochemical evidence rather than received consensus

Notable Works & Achievements

Oxygen

Power, Sex, Suicide

Life Ascending

The Vital Question

Transformer

Historical Influences

William Martin Peter Mitchell Lynn Margulis

Intellectual Lineage

London UCL Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize

Contemporaries & Peers

Bill MartinAndrew KnollSean Carroll

Minds Influenced

Origins of life biochemistry

Intellectual Posterity

The Vital Question Alkaline vent hypothesisLife Ascending

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