THE MAJOR TRANSITIONS IN EVOLUTION – Thursday, May 26th – Seminar by Eörs Szathmáry

When: Thursday, May 26th 2022

Time: 6:30pm

Where: Sala Cappella, ex Ospedale Militare, via Fabio Severo 40, and online on Zoom

Language: English

In the course of evolution there have been a number of transitions during which new levels of organization arose and complexity increased. Major evolutionary transitions include the origin of simple cells, emergence of eukaryotes, the origin of plastids (eukaryotic photosynthesis), the appearance of multicellularity, the origin of animal societies, the emergence of human groups with language. All these transitions share a number of features, including the emergence of higher-level evolutionary units from lower ones, the division of labour/combinations of functions, and the origin of novel inheritance systems (such as epigenetic inheritance).

Eörs Szathmáry studied biology at the Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest. After finishing his PhD, he served as research fellow at Eötvös University (Budapest), later becoming professor and head of the Department of Plant Taxonomy and Ecology. Szathmáry was guest of the Wissenschafstkolleg zu Berlin, the University of Zürich and the College de France in Paris. He was serving as permanent fellow of the Collegium Budapest (Institute for Advanced Study, 1995-2011). Since 2011 he is the director of the Parmenides Center for the Conceptual Foundations of Science at the Parmenides Foundation in Munich, Germany. His research topics include: the major evolutionary transitions, origins of life and the genetic code, emergence of the human language faculty, levels and mechanisms of biological cooperation, Darwinian neurodynamics and astrobiology. Between 2019 and 2021 he served as Director General of the Centre for Ecological Research in Hungary.

Read the flyer: FLYER _SZATHMARY_May 26th 2022

The seminar can be followed online (everyone) and in presence (Collegio Fonda students only).

Sign up for the seminar by filling in one the forms below, by 8:00pm Wednesday 25th of May:

• form for Collegio Fonda students only
• form  for external participants