Introductory Address 



A. I. OPARIN 



Academy of Sciences of the U.S.S.R.j Moscow 



Esteemed colleagues, dear friends. 



In opening the International Symposium which is to consider the problems 

 of the origin of life on the Earth, I wish, first of all, to extend a warm welcome 

 to our visitors, outstanding scientists of various speciaUties, who have come to 

 Moscow from seventeen countries to take part in the work of the Symposium. 



The very fact that the company, which is gathered here to discuss the problems 

 of the origin of life, is so widely representative in its composition is, in itself, 

 most significant and encouraging. 



A few years ago our friend Mr Pirie, who is present to-day, asked me what 

 really new and significant facts have been found out in the field of the discovery 

 of the origin of fife since the time of Huxley and Tyndall. It seems to me that 

 our Sjmiposiimi is a very important event in the field of enquiry in which we 

 are interested. 



Nevertheless, twenty or thirty years ago, even the calling of such a Symposium 

 would have been completely impossible in that, imtil quite recently, experimental 

 scientists had not paid sufficient attention to this problem. 



During almost the whole of the first half of this century it was only possible 

 to find, in the world literature, a very few isolated attempts to advance towards a 

 scientific solution of the question of the origin of life. 



This state of affairs was by no means fortuitous. It arose from the fact that, 

 until the end of last century and the begiiming of this one, the ideas of most 

 scientists were governed, almost exclusively, by the principle of spontaneous 

 generation, the conviction that Hving things (though only the most primitive 

 ones) could arise directly from the inorganic materials of the natural world. 

 However, very carefiilly conducted experiments showed convincingly that, in 

 every case where spontaneous generation was stated to have been observed, the 

 findings were the results of faults in the experimental methods. This took away 

 the groimd from under the feet of those scientists who saw, in spontaneous 

 generation, a scientifically credible way in which life could have originated. 

 They were, thus, without any possibility of an experimental approach to the 

 problem, which led them to a very pessimistic conclusion, namely, to the behef 

 that the problem of the origin of life was 'proscribed', that it was an insoluble 

 problem and that to work on it was unworthy of any serious investigator and was 

 a pure waste of time. 



It is now quite obvious that the reason for this negative attitude towards the 

 problem imder consideration lay, not in the nature of the problem itself, but in 

 an incorrect approach to its solution. 



The problem of the origin of life caimot be solved in isolation from a study of 



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