The history of life: Christmas lecture for biotechnology students

Prof. Dr. Marcus Baumann guided listeners through 13.8 billion years of cosmic and Earth history

Biotechnology students had the opportunity to attend a special lecture last Wednesday. Under the title ‘The History of Life – From the Big Bang through Time and Space to the Present Day’, Prof. Dr. Marcus Baumann spanned the arc from theological creation stories to the great questions of our time. In his Christmas lecture, he gave a vivid account of 13.8 billion years of cosmic and Earth history – from the origin of space and time to the emergence of life, mass extinctions as a driver of evolutionary innovation and the role of microorganisms, right up to today's man-made climate crisis. In doing so, he illustrated how closely global challenges such as global warming, world food supply and climate refugees are interlinked and how important scientific findings are for understanding them. ‘The sixth mass extinction has already begun, and it is up to all of us to determine the future fate of life on Earth,’ said the professor.