Chapter 5: Visionary Contributions Gave a Happy Trio

The evolution of life on Earth is a magnificent story. The principles by which this had occurred did not become apparent until after the book The Origin of Species was published by Charles Darwin in 1859. Since then our insights into how different forms of life have emerged and developed have grown immensely. It is a fascinating story. As conditions on Earth have changed new forms of life have emerged. Originally development took place in the oceans and the existence of some kind of simple cellular life has been identified as far back as 3.8 billion years ago. Reading the books of life provide facts on genetic relationships as mentioned in my previous books on Nobel Prizes in physiology or medicine. Comparison of differences between various species by use of genome characterizations has sometimes given surprising insights. New forms of life are continuously being unraveled and new unexpected relationships are identified. We start to get an insight into the early developments of life not least by studies of viruses and microorganism, which we shall briefly return to in the last chapter of this book…