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Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, UK, Nobel Laureate, and Honorary Professor of UCAS, Delivers a Lecture at UCAS
On January 13th, Sir Paul Nurse, President of the Royal Society, UK, Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine and Honorary Professor of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), visited UCAS and delivered a lecture titled “What is Life?”.
During the lecture
During the lecture, Sir Paul Nurse, starting from the fundamental principles of cell biology, systematically elaborated on the nature and characteristics of life in an accessible manner. Beginning with the “cell”, he reviewed the key discoveries of scientists from Robert Hooke and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek to Theodor Schwann and Rudolf Virchow, emphasizing that the cell is the basic unit of life, and vividly explained how cells interact with their environment through boundaries and maintain internal order.
Sir Paul Nurse delivered the speech
Zhou Qi hosted the lecture
The lecture spanned five core sections: The Cell, The Gene, Life as Chemistry, Life as Information, and Evolution by Natural Selection. Sir Paul Nurse not only outlined important biological theories but also interspersed the stories of scientific giants such as Gregor Mendel, Louis Pasteur, and Charles Darwin. He emphasized that life is not merely a collection of chemical and physical processes but a complex system reliant on information storage and regulation; all life on Earth originates from a common ancestor and evolves and adapts through natural selection. The lecture integrated historical perspectives, philosophy of science, and insights from modern biology, providing a profound response to the fundamental question: What is Life?
Sir Paul Nurse exchanged ideas with students
The lecture was hosted by Zhou Qi, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS) and President of UCAS. More than 300 Chinese and international students from UCAS, Peking University, Tsinghua University, Beijing Institute of Technology, and other institutions participated and actively engaged in the Q&A session, exchanging insights with each other.
Before the lecture, Zhou Qi officially met with the delegation from the Royal Society, UK at the Zhongguancun Campus of UCAS. The meeting was attended by Liu Weidong, Director General of the Bureau of International Cooperation of CAS, Wang Yanfen, Executive Vice President of UCAS, and Lin Xiao, Vice President of UCAS.
More information：
In September 2013, Sir Paul Nurse was invited to speak at the UCAS China Sciences and Humanities Forum, delivering a report titled “Making Science Work”. Following the speech, UCAS conferred on him the title of honorary professor and presented the certificate to him.
Author: Office for International Cooperation and Exchanges
Editor: GAO Yuan
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Research News
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Chinese scientists develop breakthrough method for aromatic amine applications
BEIJING, Nov. 16 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese research team has developed an advanced method to overcome long-standing challenges in the application of aromatic amines, promising a safer and more efficient alternative to an old industrial process, according to a study recently published in the journal Nature.
The research, led by Zhang Xiaheng from the Hangzhou Institute for Advanced Study, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduces a novel strategy that efficiently converts inert aromatic carbon-nitrogen bonds into various crucial chemical bonds.
Aromatic amines are fundamental structural components widely found in pharmaceuticals, agrochemicals and natural products. However, their potential as versatile building blocks in synthesis has remained underdeveloped.
For over a century, industrial practices have relied on converting aromatic amines into diazonium salts -- intermediates known for their high explosiveness and instability. This conventional approach suffers from significant drawbacks, including safety hazards, excessive copper reagent consumption, and limited substrate compatibility.
To address these challenges, the research team spent three years dedicated to exploring direct activation pathways for aromatic amines. Ultimately, they successfully developed a novel direct deaminative functionalization technology using common and inexpensive laboratory reagents.
The new method offers significant advantages for poly-nitrogen heterocyclic systems commonly used in drug synthesis. With simple and readily available laboratory reagents, it exhibits excellent versatility -- applicable to almost all types of medicinal heteroaromatic amines and aniline derivatives with diverse electronic properties and structures, regardless of amino group position. Moreover, it enables kilogram-scale production through straightforward operations.
This research opens up a new pathway for rapidly constructing complex molecules from readily available starting materials, offering significant potential for advancing research and development in medicinal chemistry, Zhang said.
Source: Xinhua
Editor: GAO Yuan
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