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Academic Insights for the Thinking World

Professor Peter Atkins: On Being

In this scientific ‘Credo’, Professor Peter Atkins considers the universal questions of origins, endings, birth, and death to which religions have claimed answers. With his usual economy, wit, and elegance, unswerving before awkward realities, Atkins presents what science has to say. While acknowledging the comfort some find in belief, he declares his own faith in science’s capacity to reveal the deepest truths.

Below, you can listen to Peter Atkins talk about topics raised in his book On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence. This podcast is recorded by the Oxfordshire Branch of the British Science Association, whose regular SciBars podcasts can be found here.

Listen to podcast:
[audio:http://oxfordscibar.jellycast.com/files/audio/peter%20atkins%20oxford%20scibar%20full.mp3]

Peter Atkins is Fellow of Lincoln College, University of Oxford. He is the author of almost 60 books, which include On Being: A Scientist’s Exploration of the Great Questions of Existence and the world-renowned textbook Physical Chemistry (published in its ninth edition in November 2009). His other textbooks include Inorganic Chemistry: Chemical Principles and Molecular Quantum Mechanics. He has also written a number of books for a general readership, including Galileo’s Finger: The Ten Great Ideas of Science, The Periodic Kingdom, Molecules, and The Laws of Thermodynamics: A Very Short Introduction. He has been a visiting professor in France, Israel, New Zealand, and China, and continues to lecture widely throughout the world.

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