Darwinian Evolution of Molecules

Hiromoto Nakazawa is an emeritus fellow at the National Institute for Materials Science, Japan, and a fellow of the Japan Geoscience Union. He is also a former chairman of The Clay Science Society of Japan (2001–2002).  He devoted most of his research time to X-ray crystallography while at the National Institute for Research in Inorganic Materials (NIRIM), Japan. As a materials scientist, he has been awarded the Crystallographic Society of Japan Prize (1978) for the identification and study of new superstructures of iron sulfides using X-ray diffraction and high-resolution electron microscopy. He was also awarded the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon as well as several other prizes for his invention of the scanning X-ray microscope using the X-ray guide tube (2000). His curiosity regarding the origin of life from his student days brought him to the study of clay minerals as materials at the interface between the inorganic and organic realms during his tenure as a managing researcher at NIRIM (1985–2000).  While a professor at Tohoku University, Japan (2001), he commenced his experimental studies of the origin of life together with his students and subsequently proposed a new scenario for the origin of life on the Earth based on their recent results (2006, 2014). In 2011, he received the Order of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon.

Preface.- The Dynamic Earth: A Recent Concept Necessary for the Study of the Origin of Life.- Why did Life Generate? Why does Life Evolve? Physical Perspective of the Origin of Life.- What is the Ultimate Ancestor? Evidence from Fossils and Gene Analyses.- “Miller-Urey Experiment” in the Recent Picture of the Early Earth.- Origin of Organic Molecules and Natural Selection of Bioorganic Molecules.- Molecular Evolution in Deep Subterranean Regions.- The last stage of molecular evolution to the birth of life: Individuals, metabolism, and heredity.- Summary: The Evolutionary Phylogenetic Tree of the Earth’s Light Elements.