Oparin’s Conception of Origins of Life

History

In 1924, Alexander Ivanovitch Oparin (1894–1980), a young scientist in vegetal physiology, published in Moscow a very important text about the origin of life. With this text, he began a very long career devoted to this topic. He wrote important books and developed very active experimental researches.

He published this first text, entitled Origins of Life, in Russian. He described the evolution of earth and the transformation of matter from mineral molecules to organic molecules. Finally, according to him, little drops of organic matter could appear, which constituted the last step before becoming cells.

In 1936, Oparin published an important book entitled Origins of Life. In an interdisciplinary approach, he suggested a broad scenario of the origins of life on Earth, describing all the steps of the evolution of the Earth, of matter, and of primordial life. This book knew a great success and was translated into several languages, and especially into English in 1938.

This book is...