KRR Memorial Lecture

How did life begin and evolve on Earth? What are the conditions under which life can exist? Does life exist elsewhere in the Universe and, if it does, how can it be detected/identified?One of the greatest challenges for science in the 21st century must be to provide answers to these questions. Indeed the discovery of life on a planet other than Earth (even in its simplest form) will be a defining moment in human history, while understanding the origins of life itself on Earth would be a crowning achievement of human scientific endeavour.Today, for the first time it is possible to develop a robust scientific programme to explore these fundamental key questions. However, this requires a transdisciplinary alliance drawing on researchers from astronomy, biology, chemistry, engineering, geosciences,physics and, even perhaps philosophy, in turn fostering a new generation of researchers who will need a range of cross disciplinary skills and a wider more polymorphic approach to the conduct of such research. This is the new science of 'Astrobiology'. In this talk I will explain how astrobiology is developing and discuss when we might expect answers to these fundamental questions.