Harold Joseph Morowitz (December 4, 1927 – March 22, 2016) was an American biophysicist who studied the application of thermodynamics to living systems. Author of numerous books and articles, his work includes technical monographs as well as essays. He primarily studied the origin of life, this being his research interest for more than fifty years. He was the Robinson Professor of Biology and Natural Philosophy at George Mason University after a long career at Yale.
Life and career Morowitz was born in Poughkeepsie, New York. He received a B.S. in physics and philosophy in 1947, an M.S. in physics in 1950, and a Ph.D. in biophysics in 1951, all from Yale University. Morowitz was a professor in the department of molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale from 1955 to 1987, also serving as the Master of Pierson College from 1981 to 1986. He spent the rest of his career on the faculty at George Mason University, which he joined in 1988 as Clarence Robinson Professor of biology and natural philosophy. He served as the founding director of the Krasnow Institute for Advanced Study at George Mason from 1993 to 1998. Morowitz was closely associated with the Santa Fe Institute since 1987, where he was Chairman Emeritus of the Science Board. He also served as the founding editor of the journal Complexity. In the 1990s he contributed a monthly column on science and society to Hospital Practice.
Morowitz was a longtime consultant for NASA, and served on the committees that planned the quarantine procedures for Apollo 11 and the biology experiments the Viking probe carried to the surface of Mars. He was a member of the science advisory committee for Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona, which, at 3.14 acres, is the largest enclosed ecosystem ever built.What People and the Press Have Said About Biosphere 2 – Biospheres.com
Some leading biophysicists have suggested that Morowitz may have discovered a "fourth law of thermodynamics" when, in 1968, he found that, "in steady state systems, the flow of energy through the system from a source to a sink will lead to at least one cycle in the system."Variations of the 4th Law of Thermodynamics – Institute of Human Thermodynamics Eric D. Schneider, for example, says, "Morowitz's cycling theorem is the best candidate for a fourth law of thermodynamics."
The origin of life Morowitz's book Energy Flow in Biology laid out his central thesis that "the energy that flows through a system acts to organize that system," an insight later quoted on the inside front cover of The Last Whole Earth Catalog. He was a vigorous proponent of the view that life on earth emerged deterministically from the laws of chemistry and physics, and so believed it highly probable that life exists widely in the universe. The origin of life being a very wide subject of study, his scientific work encompasses, more specifically, several related subjects such as: the origin of the chemiosmotic mechanism, the prebiotic synthesis of primitive cell membranes, the characteristics of a ‘minimal cell’ (including the minimal genome), and the origin and evolution of protometabolic networks (in a submarine, hydrothermal context).
In 1981, he testified at "McLean v. Arkansas" (nicknamed "Scopes II") that creationism has no scientific basis and so should not be taught as science in public schools.
His work is sometimes associated with the Gard model of evolutionary biology
Testimony in McLean v. Arkansas trial
The McLean v Arkansas trial, held in the Federal District Court in Little Rock, Arkansas, dealt with “Balanced Treatment of Creation Science and Evolution Science in the Public Schools” and was of considerable interest at the time. Morowitz described his testimony on this occasion in an essay “Tell it to the Judge” published in a somewhat whimsical collection of essays entitled “Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life”.Harold Morowitz (1986 edition) Mayonnaise and the Origin of Life, Berkley Books Publishing Group New York, ASIN: B00151WGGO Morowitz’s testimony was related to the aspect of the case dealing with abiogenesis, “the emergence of life from nonlife.” In support of creationism, the argument had been made that the second law of thermodynamics precludes that abiogenesis could have occurred by a natural process; thus there was a requirement for supernatural events. According to the second law, isolated systems move towards the maximum degree of molecular disorder (life on earth is an ordered system). Also in this case, “isolated system” means the absence of flows of both energy and matter into and out of the system.
Much of Morowitz’s scientific career had been devoted to understanding the thermodynamic foundations of biological organization. When he was called to give his expert testimony he noted that Ludwig Boltzmann, the distinguished Austrian physicist had in 1886 resolved the confusion concerning the applicability of the second law of thermodynamics to living systems. Boltzmann had made clear that the Earth, rather than being an isolated system, is an open system undergoing a flow of solar energy from the sun. Thus the surface of the Earth is not limited by a law that is restricted to isolated entities. Morowitz also pointed out that newer developments in the field of irreversible thermodynamics (see Irreversible Process and Lars Onsager), indicated that systems become ordered under a flow of energy. In his testimony Morowitz concluded that the existence of life involves no contradictions to the laws of physics.
Bibliography Selected scientific works
Morowitz, H.J. (1953), “The Information Content of Living Systems”, Physical Review, 91, No. 2, pp. 492–493. Morowitz, Harold J. and Spaulding, Marie (1958). “A statistical analysis of the order of certain amino acids in the protein of Escherichia coli”, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Volume 29, Issue 3 (September 1958), pp. 514–521. doi: 10.1016/0006-3002(58)90007-6 Morowitz, Harold (1966). “The Minimum Size of Cells”, pp. 446–477. In: Wolstenholme, G. E. W. and O'Connor, Maeve (Eds.), Ciba Foundation Symposium: Principles of Biomolecular Organization, Ciba Foundation, 1966. doi: 10.1002/9780470719442.ch16 Morowitz, Harold J. (1967). “Biological Self-Replicating Systems”, pp. 35–59. In: Snell, Fred M. (Ed.) Progress in Theoretical Biology, Volume 1, Academic Press, New York, 1967. Morowitz, Harold J. (1969). “A mechanism for the amplification of fluctuations in racemic mixtures”, Journal of Theoretical Biology, Vol. 25, Issue 3 (December 1969), pp. 491–494. doi: 10.1016/S0022-5193(69)80035-4 Folsome, C. E. and Morowitz, H. J. (1969). “Prebiological membranes: Synthesis and properties”, Space Life Sciences, Vol. 1, Issue 4 (March 1969), pp. 538–544. doi: 10.1007/BF00924244 Morowitz, Harold J. (1977). “Perspectives on Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life”, Advances in Biological and Medical Physics, Vol. 16, pp. 151–163. doi: 10.1016/B978-0-12-005216-5.50013-X Morowitz, Harold J. (1981). “Phase separation, charge separation and biogenesis”, Biosystems, Vol. 14, Issue 1, pp. 41–47. doi: 10.1016/0303-2647(81)90020-4 Smith, Temple F. and Morowitz, Harold J. (1982). “Between history and physics”, Journal of Molecular Evolution, Vol. 18, Issue 4 (July 1982), pp. 265–282. doi: 10.1007/BF01734104 Morowitz, H. J. (1984). “The completeness of molecular biology”, Israel Journal of Medical Sciences, Vol. 20, Issue 9 (September 1984), pp. 750–753. Morowitz, Harold J. (1987). “A Hardware View of Biological Organization”, pp. 53–64. In: Yates, F. Eugene, Garfinkel, Alan, Walter, Donald O. and Yates, Gregory B. (Eds.), Self-Organizing Systems: The Emergence of Order. Springer, 1987. doi: 10.1007/978-1-4613-0883-6_4 Morowitz, Harold J., Heinz, Bettina and Deamer, David W. (1988). “The chemical logic of a minimum protocell”, Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Vol. 18, Issue 3 (September 1988), pp. 281–87. doi: 10.1007/BF01804674 MacElroy, R.D., Morowitz, H., and Pohorille, A. (1989). “Ion transport mechanisms and prebiotic membranes”, Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Vol. 19, Issues 3-5 (May 1989), pp. 295–296. doi: 10.1007/BF02388856 Morowitz, Harold. J. (1994). “Artificial biochemistry, life before enzymes”, pp. 381–388. In: Langton, Christopher G. (Ed.), Artificial Life III: Proceedings of the Workshop on Artificial Life, Held June 1992 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Reading, Mass: Addison-Wesley, 1994. Morowitz, Harold, Peterson, Eta and Chang, Sherwood (1995). “The synthesis of glutamic acid in the absence of enzymes: Implications for biogenesis”, Origins of Life and Evolution of the Biosphere, Vol. 25, Issue 4 (August 1995), pp. 395–399. doi: 10.1007/BF01581777 Morowitz, Harold J. “The Secret of Life”, Hospital Practice, Vol. 30, Issue 7 (July 1995), pp. 19–20. doi: 10.1080/21548331.1995.11443220 Morowitz, Harold J. (1999). “A theory of biochemical organization, metabolic pathways, and evolution”, Complexity, Vol. 4, Issue 6 (July/August 1999), pp. 39–53. doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1099-0526(199907/08)4:6<39::AID-CPLX8>3.0.CO;2-2 Morowitz, Harold J., Kostelnik, Jennifer D., Yang, Jeremy, and Cody, George D. (2000). “The origin of intermediary metabolism”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 97, Issue 14 (June 20, 2000), pp. 7704–7708. doi: 10.1073/pnas.110153997 Cody, G.D., Boctor, N.Z., Hazen, R.M., Brandes, J.A., Morowitz, Harold J., Yoder Jr, H.S. (2001).“Geochemical roots of autotrophic carbon fixation: hydrothermal experiments in the system citric acid, H2O-(±FeS)−(±NiS)”, Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta, Vol. 65, Issue 20 (15 October 2001), pp. 3557–3576. doi: 10.1016/S0016-7037(01)00674-3 Morowitz, Harold (2002). “Phenetics, a born again science”, Complexity, Vol. 8, Issue 1 (September/October 2002), pp. 12–13. doi: 10.1002/cplx.10058 Morowitz, Harold (2003). “How many genes does an organism need?”, Complexity, Vol. 9, Issue 2 (November/December 2003), pp. 11–12. doi: 10.1002/cplx.20016 Smith, Eric and Morowitz, Harold J. (2004). “Universality in intermediary metabolism”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 101, Issue 36 (August 30, 2004), pp. 13168–13173. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0404922101 Morowitz, Harold J., Srinivasan, Vijayasarathy, and Smith, Eric (2004). “A Paradigm Shift in Biochemistry”, Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences, Vol. 90, No. 3 (Autumn 2004), pp. 58–66. JSTOR: 24531013 Smith, D. Eric and Morowitz, Harold J. (2004). “Searching for the Laws of Life”, SFI bulletin, winter 2004, pp. 16–23. Copley, Shelley D., Smith, Eric, and Morowitz, Harold J. (2005). “A mechanism for the association of amino acids with their codons and the origin of the genetic code”, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Vol. 102, Issue 12 (March 11, 2005), pp. 4442–4447. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0501049102 Morowitz, Harold J., Srinivasan, Vijaysarathy, Copley, Shelley and Smith, Eric (2005). “The Simplest Enzyme Revisited: The Chicken and Egg Argument Solved”, Complexity, Vol., No. 5, pp. 12–13. doi: 10.1002/cplx.20087 Morowitz, Harold J., Broyles, Daniel and Lasus, Howard (2005). “The Robustness of Intermediary Metabolism”, pp. 154–159. In: Sapp, J. (Ed.), Microbial Phylogeny and Evolution: Concepts and Controversies, Oxford University Press, 2005. Morowitz, Harold J., Srinivasan, Vijayasarathy and Smith, Eric (2006). “The Swiss Army Knife of Biological Catalysis: A Compact Toolkit of Organic Functional Groups”, Complexity, Vol. 11, No. 3, pp. 9–10. doi: 10.1002/cplx.20112 Copley, Shelley D., Smith, Eric and Morowitz, Harold J. (2007). “The origin of the RNA world: Co-evolution of genes and metabolism”, Bioorganic Chemistry, Vol. 35, Issue 6 (December 2007), pp. 430–443. doi: 10.1016/j.bioorg.2007.08.001