R J P Williams, Ros Rickaby

Gebundenes Buch

Evolution's Destiny

Co-Evolving Chemistry of the Environment and Life

Beschreibung

Traditionally, evolution has been viewed solely from a biological fitness perspective, with genes determining how life takes shape in response to the environment. Furthermore, until the arrival of man, life had little or no apparent influence on the environment. Recent advances in our understanding of the Earth's geochemistry and knowledge of the geological record almost from the origin of the Earth have lead to the consideration that, beyond the "survival of the fittest" species, evolution has been occurring on larger, chemical, scale. This book demonstrates that biology and geochemistry have continually influenced each other in the co-evolution of the Earth and all life. In particular there were several essential controls over the bulk inorganic elements in cells which had major consequences later in evolution. The main driving change during evolution was that oxygen released from cells led to novel inorganic elements in the environment. The new elements then interacted with the cells and ultimately the cells came to utilise them in stages. The large scale changes of environmental chemicals ceased about 400 million years ago. At that time the chemical conditions of the environment for present-day life existed. Subsequent changes of organisms were by random "Darwinian" processes and led eventually to the development of a refined brain in man. Man has then been able to restart chemical and physical changes in the environment. The outcome of this remains unknown, but history implies that changes in living organisms must result from these novel chemical experiments with the environment. This highly original scholarly work will be of interest to chemists and biologists alike. Anyone with an interest in evolution, the environment, or natural history will find this a fascinating and inspiring subject.

Autor

Professor Bob Williams, MA, DPhil, FRS, is Emeritus Fellow at Wadham College and Emeritus Professor, University of Oxford. Born in 1926, he was educated at Wallasey Grammar School. He studied Chemistry at Merton College, Oxford, graduating in 1948. During the course of his Part II work the Irving-Williams series of the stabilities of complex ions, which is of paramount importance in both non-living and living systems, was discovered. He took his doctor's degree at Oxford in 1950 working with Professor H.M.N.H. Irving. With Professor A. Tiselius (Uppsala, Sweden) 1950-51, he developed certain (gradient elution) chromatographic methods of analysis. He then became lecturer and tutor in Chemistry at Wadham College, 1955-65. In 1961 he proposed proton-gradient-driven ATP formation as the driving force of bio-energetics. With C.S.G. Phillips, in 1996, he wrote a textbook of Inorganic Chemistry. After a year at Harvard University, 1965-66, with Professor B.L. Vallee, he changed to teach biochemistry until 1974. With Vallee he noted the entatic (constrained) state of atoms at enzyme sites. He became, successively, a Reader (1972) and Napier Royal Society Research Professor at the University of Oxford (1975-1991). He was elected Fellow of The Royal Society in 1972 and is a Foreign Member of the Swedish, Portugese, Czechoslovakian and Belgian science academies. He has given named lectures series in several European and North American Universities and numerous plenary international lectures at many Chemistry, Biochemistry and Biology Conferences. He is a medallist of the Biochemical Society (twice), The Royal Society (twice), The Royal Society of Chemistry (three times), The European Biochemical Societies (twice) and the International Union of Biochemistry. He has honorary degrees from Louvain, Leicester, Keel, Lisbon and East Anglia Universities. Bob Williams was a founder member of the Oxford Enzyme group in which he and his colleagues devised many new methods for the study of in vitro and in vivo biological systems, especially using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. He has recently co-edited a book on Chemistry at Oxford: A History from 1600-2005. He has been named as a Citizen of Honour by Oxford City and has an award from Oxford Preservation Trust for the effective creation of Sunnymead Park in North Oxford. He remains particularly proud of the success of his pupils in all walks of life. Professor Ros Rickaby is Professor of Biogeochemistry at the University of Oxford. Her main research themes include the environment, oceans and climate and lectures in the fundamentals of chemistry, stable isotope geochemistry and the evolutions of climate on long and short timescales.

Produktdetails

• Verlag: RSC Publishing
• Seitenzahl: 344
• Erscheinungstermin: 25. Juli 2012
• Englisch
• Abmessung: 245mm x 161mm x 31mm
• Gewicht: 776g
• ISBN-13: 9781849735582
• ISBN-10: 1849735581
• Artikelnr.: 36131974