Motion of particles: from philosophy to life

Speaker: Prof. Robert Hołyst
Affiliation: Institute of Physical Chemistry PAS, Warsaw, Poland
Link to MSTeams meeting

Motion is the prime concept of physics and philosophy. As such, it is not explained by a broader theory than those known in science.

More than 2000 years ago, Greek philosophers questioned motion as a real phenomenon. The concept of motion was put on firm ground in the XVI century by experiments of Galileo Galilei and further explained in the paradigm of forces by Newton. Einstein, Michelson, and Morley shed additional light on the rules governing the motion of objects in our universe. All of these paradigms described the motion of single objects in the space-time continuum. In the language of chemistry, these discovered rules of motion were applicable to matter diluted in space and time. However, for biochemists and biologists life is governed by the motion of many objects of dense matter in a finite volume of living cells. 

Albert Einstein, Marian Smoluchowski, and William Sutherland formulated the first principles for this motion in dilute solutions and we extended their theory to living cells.

This talk will guide you through space and time towards the basic ingredients of life — the synchronized, but still random motion of many objects in restricted space. 

These rules of synchronization are awaiting discovery. 

Chairman: Prof. Jacek Gapiński

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