Groundbreaking chemist defines all of life in 2 words

Normally, life have a plain definition: a living being needs to have digestion (to extract her energy from food and to eliminate its waste later), to reproduce (to copy her DNA), and so on. Things you can find from bacteria to trees, from animals to as (just another animal but a more intelligent one), and so on. Some people consider the viruses alive but they are not - they only use they host to get energy and to reproduce - they don't have their own digestion. So that's why some people are asking themselves and other people around them what is life, really? Despite human scientific advancements, we still don’t really know.

Leroy "Lee" Cronin, the Regis Professor of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, says there is a significant disconnect between the physics of the universe and the biological processes we observe. This discrepancy makes for a difficult challenge in understanding how inanimate matter evolves into breathing, thinking, life forms like our plants, our animals or us.

The solution? Leroy "Lee" Cronin proposes assembly theory – where we use complexity at scale to piece together all the components that work together to create adaptable life. Assembly theory suggests that life emerges through two key processes: copying and existence. These two simple words, Leroy Cronin explains, are the essential essences of life as we know it.

Leroy "Lee" Cronin has one of the largest multidisciplinary, chemistry-based research teams in the world. He has given over 300 international talks and has authored over 350 peer-reviewed papers with recent work published in Nature, Science, and PNAS. He and his team are trying to make artificial life forms, find alien life, explore the digitization of chemistry, understand how information can be encoded into chemicals, and construct chemical computers.

Thanks to Leroy "Lee" Cronin, this theory has been put in use by NASA in its search for lifeforms on other planets like Mars or on asteroids like Europe. Together, we humans are growing closer to understanding the mystery of life – how it started, what it looks like, and how it might evolve.