edge.org: The 32nd Richard Dimbleby Lecture

Thank you for the kind introduction. It is a great honor to be presenting the 2007 Dimbleby Lecture as only the third American, and one of just a handful of scientists out of the 32 Dimbleby Lectures.

I have called this lecture ‘A DNA-Driven World’, because I believe that the future of our society relies at least in part on our understanding of biology and the molecules of life – DNA. Every era is defined by its technologies. The last century could be termed the nuclear age, and I propose that the century ahead will be fundamentally shaped by advances in biology and my field of genomics, which is the study of the complete genetic make-up of a species. [ read more ]