About this Event

Celebrate Darwin Day with a keynote lecture by James E. Strick, professor and chair of the Science, Technology and Society Program at Franklin and Marshall College. 

This year's presentation delves into Darwin’s nuanced and often private perspectives on the origin of life. Though widely assumed to connect his theory of evolution with life arising through natural chemical processes, Darwin’s public and private remarks reveal ambivalence and evolving positions. Dr. Strick will contextualize these perspectives within Victorian debates on spontaneous generation, germ theory and the broader implications for modern origin-of-life research, including NASA’s quest to understand the universe’s potential to harbor life beyond Earth.  

Prior to the lecture, enjoy a special exhibit of Darwin-related items from the Mark Samuels Lasner Collection and Special Collections, including early editions of Origin of Species, The Voyage of the Beagle, and The Descent of Man, as well as a letter by Darwin, a book from his personal library, and a photograph by Julia Margaret Camero 

James Strick is Professor in the Dept. of Earth and Environment and Chair of the Program in Science, Technology and Society, at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA.  Originally trained in microbiology, and later in history of science, Dr. Strick has published extensively on the history of ideas and experiments about the origin of life, including Sparks of Life: Darwinism and the Victorian Debates over Spontaneous Generation (Harvard, 2000), Wilhelm Reich, Biologist (Harvard, 2015) and, with Steven Dick, The Living Universe: NASA and the Development of Astrobiology (Rutgers, 2004).  He is also the editor of two six volume collections of primary sources: Evolution and the Spontaneous Generation Debate (Thoemmes, 2001) and The Origin of Life Debate: Molecules, Cells, and Generation (Thoemmes, 2004).  Strick is currently at work on a scientific biography of Wilhelm Reich.  Strick has been an advisory editor of the history of science journal ISIS and a member of the History of Science Society Council.