About the Center

The Chicago Center for the Study of the Origin Life supports multidisciplinary research focused on understanding how life developed on Earth and potential for life elsewhere. We bring together scientists of all career stages across the Physical Sciences Division of the University of Chicago, primarily from the Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Chemistry, the Geophysical Sciences, and Physics, to promote, encourage, and support fundamental research in this area, train early-career scientists in cross-disciplinary scientific exploration, and foster a community of innovative thinkers that will push traditional disciplinary boundaries in studying the history and future of life in the universe.

The University of Chicago has a celebrated history of advancing our knowledge of how life emerged on the early Earth and the conditions that were required to do so. A major effort in this regard was the Miller-Urey experiment of the early 1950s by graduate student Stanley Miller and Nobel laureate professor Harold Urey, which showed that organic compounds, including the fundamental building blocks of life, could be naturally produced within similar environments as those expected shortly after our planet formed.

The Chicago Center for the Origins of Life strives to extend this legacy, taking advantage of the ongoing advances in chemistry, physics, astronomy, and Earth sciences to understand how the building blocks of life were synthesized and assembled on the early Earth, and whether similar processes could operate elsewhere in the universe. The Center consists of scientists across the Physical Sciences Division who are interested in applying their knowledge and skills to address topics related to these matters and to chart new paths of inquiry.

Steve Koppes, “The origin of life on Earth, explained” | University of Chicago News