Harold Morowitz (1927 – 2016, In Memoriam)

Robinson Professor Harold Morowitz
Robinson Professor Harold Morowitz

Sadly, on March 22, 2016, we lost our dear colleague and friend. Biophysicist Harold Morowitz became a Robinson Professor after a long career of teaching and research at Yale University as Professor of Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry and served for five years as Master of Pierson College. The author of several books, Morowitz wrote extensively on the thermodynamics of living systems, as well as on popular topics in science. Included in those publications are Mayonnaise and the Origins of Life, Cosmic Joy and Local Pain, The Thermodynamics of Pizza, Entropy and the Magic Flute, and The Kindly Dr. Guillotin. In his current research, Morowitz was investigating the interface of biology and information sciences and continued his exploration of the origins of life. Other books are The Origin of Cellular Life: Metabolism Recapitulates Biogenesis and The Facts of Life (co-authored with James Trefil). He was Staff Scientist and founding Director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study and former Editor-in-Chief of the journal Complexity. His book The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex was published in 2002 by Oxford University Press. His most recent book, The Origin and Nature of Life of Earth, co-authored with Eric Smith was published after his demise, by Cambridge University Press.

Dr. Morowitz was principal investigator on the multi-institutional grant “From Geochemistry to the Origin of Life,” which is centered at the Santa Fe Institute and includes George Mason University and four other research centers.