Lab's West speaks Wednesday on life, its simplicity and complexity

Part of Frontiers in Science lecture series

The Laboratory 's Frontiers in Science Public Lecture Series continues Wednesday with a talk titled "The Complexity, Simplicity and Unity of Living Systems" by Geoffrey West of Elementary Particles and Field Theory (T-8).

According to West, "life" is the most complex physical system in the universe. West will discuss how life manifests an extraordinary diversity of forms, functions and behaviors ranging over an enormous scale although based on the same fundamental physics and chemistry: the largest animals (whales) and plants (sequoias) weigh a remarkable billion trillion times more than the smallest microbes. But, in spite of these apparent differences, many of life's most fundamental and seemingly most complex phenomena scale with size in a surprisingly simple fashion.

West will talk about universal characteristics that determine many of the generic properties of living organisms. He will discuss the scaling laws that exhibit a universal mathematical behavior that reflect the fundamental unifying principles that have crafted and constrained the way life functions and is organized from molecules and cells to whales and ecosystems.

Sponsored by the Laboratory Fellows and presented by Laboratory scientists, five lectures a year are planned. Each lecture will be presented in Los Alamos, Santa Fe, Española and Taos to ensure that Northern New Mexico residents can attend. All lectures are free and begin at 7:30 p.m.

On Wednesday, West will speak in the James A. Little Theater at the New Mexico School for the Deaf on Cerrillos Road in Santa Fe. He will repeat his discussion Thursday in the Taos Convention Center, on Nov. 20 at the Center for the Arts Theater at Northern New Mexico Community College in Española, and Nov. 21, in the Duane W. Smith Auditorium at Los Alamos High School on Diamond Drive.

West is a Laboratory fellow and has worked at the Laboratory for 28 years. West received his bachelor's degree from Cambridge University in England and his doctoral degree in physics from Stanford University in California. He was a research associate at Cornell University, a research fellow and lecturer at Harvard University and an assistant professor at Stanford University.

For more information, see the Nov. 8 Daily Newsbulletin or visit the public lecture series Web site at http://stb.lanl.gov/fellows/fellows.html online. Directions to the lecture locations also are available on the Web site.

-- Shelley Thompson

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