New_Scientist_-_17_08_2019

56 | New Scientist | 17 August 2019

The back pages The Q&A

Lee Cronin is fascinated by nature’s

patterns, but he struggled with science

at school. Now, he is building a chemical

robot to explore the origin of life

As a child, what did you want

to do when you grew up?

From about 7 years old, I was always taking

stuff apart to build new things like lasers and

computers, but they never worked. I wanted to

know why, so I dreamed of being a scientist.

Were you good at science at school?

I wanted to be, but I struggled to concentrate

and messed around a lot.

Explain what you do in one paragraph.

I’m a chemistry professor who loves inventing

stuff to understand things. Right now, we are

trying to build an alien life form, to control

chemistry with computers and to see if we

can make a chemical computer and

perhaps even a brain.

And in one sentence?

My entire life, I’ve been looking for patterns in

nature and to understand why life exists and how

chemistry makes information – that dream

follows me around in everything I do.

What does a typical day involve?

There’s no typical day, but when I’m not

travelling, I spend a lot of time talking with my

team, dreaming up new experiments, writing

manuscripts and applying for funding. In the

evening, I go for a run and spend time with

my family, and I’m often in my home

laboratory / workshop building stuff.

What do you love most about what you do?

And what’s the worst part?

I love dreaming up new ideas for experiments

and making new discoveries. There is no worst

part, but I often find it hard to express new

ideas in a way that anybody can understand.

What’s the most exciting thing

you’re working on right now?

We’re building a modular chemical robot

called the chemputer, inspired by the scale of the

Large Hadron Collider, but exploring chemistry

and the origin of life instead. We’ve already

used it to make important molecules like

drugs automatically just from computer

code and chemicals.

If you could send a message back to

yourself as a kid, what would you say?

I’d reassure myself that feeling stupid is OK

and that I should enjoy my confusion more.

What scientific development do you hope

to see in your lifetime?

I’d love it if we discovered a new type of life

elsewhere in the universe.

Which discovery do you wish

you’d made yourself?

The transistor.

What’s the best piece of advice anyone

ever gave you?

Seek criticism widely and address it all.

What’s the best thing you’ve read

or seen in the past 12 months?

Superheavy by Kit Chapman. I love all science but

I am a chemist at heart. Reading this book about

making the heavy elements was inspirational.

If you could have a long conversation

with any scientist, living or dead,

who would it be?

I would love to get computing pioneer John von

Neumann and synthetic chemist Ben Feringa

together to discuss how to make molecular

self-constructing machines.

How useful will your skills be after

the apocalypse?

I might be able to build computers or

lasers that work, finally.

OK, one last thing: tell us something

that will blow our minds...

I’ve invented a theory that might be able to help

us identify alien signatures, those of life forms

in the lab, in the solar system and on exoplanets.

This theory might also unlock how we build new

life in the lab and explain the origin of life.  ❚

Lee Cronin is Regius Chair of Chemistry at the

University of Glasgow, UK

“ I’d reassure my

childhood self

that feeling

stupid is OK”

CREDIT:CRISTIAN STORTO FOTOGRAFIA/GETTY. PORTRAIT: ROBERT ORMEROD