Antonio Lazcano, at the ceremony of appointment as honorary doctor by the University of València.

The Mexican scientist Antonio Lazcano, emeritus professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) specialized in evolutionary biology and the origin of life, will deliver this Tuesday the 17th the welcome lecture of the Faculty of Biological Sciences of the University of València for the 2024-2025 academic year. The event, in which the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of the UV collaborates, will be at 12:30 p.m. in the Darwin Room of the Burjassot-Paterna Campus.

Antonio Lazcano, doctor honoris causa from the University of Valencia in 2015, he will give the conference “Oparin and the origin of life: centenary of a theory”, in which he will analyze the significance of the theory of the Soviet biochemist and biologist Aleksandr Oparin (1894-1980) with his book The origin of life vida, a masterpiece of evolutionary thought and one century old.

Oparin argued that the conditions of the early Earth (energy from lightning, volcanoes and radiation and the atmosphere) triggered the synthesis of organic compounds. Some of his ideas were corroborated by scientist Stanley Miller's later experiments, simulating the conditions of the early Earth and the chemical reactions that could construct the first simple building blocks, such as amino acids.  

Antonio Lazcano, member of the National College of Mexico, is the first Hispanic American scientist to have presided over the most important evolutionary biology organization in the world, the International Society for the Study of the Origin of Life (ISSOL).

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