Jack Szostak has spent his life circling one of the oldest questions in science. How does life begin. Not as metaphor, but as chemistry that somehow learns to copy itself and change. He approaches the question with the patience of a careful observer and the curiosity of someone who never stopped wondering how the natural world first opened its eyes.
He was born in London and raised in Canada, drawn early to radios, circuits, and the quiet logic of biology. By his early twenties he was deep into graduate work at Cornell, where he helped reveal how chromosomes guard their ends. That work later contributed to a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. The recognition could have easily kept him anchored in genetics, yet it had the opposite effect. It cleared space for him to chase something even more elemental.
At Harvard and Massachusetts General Hospital he turned fully toward the origin of life. The lab became a place where ancient Earth could be rebuilt in small glass containers. He and his students tried to imagine a planet before biology. They studied which molecules were likely to have existed and how they might have assembled into simple protocells. They examined the early copying of nucleic acids and the fragile steps that must occur before evolution can take hold. Szostak’s own definition of life rests on that point. If it evolves, it is alive. Before that moment, it is still chemistry.
The work is demanding and beautifully slow. It requires an eye for tiny shifts in behavior and a willingness to test the same idea again and again. Szostak has the right temperament for this. He is calm, thoughtful, and open to surprise. He speaks with a gentle steadiness that makes the most complicated ideas seem almost plain.
When I photographed him in his Chicago home, the winter light was already fading. He welcomed the quiet, which suited the conversation. We talked about protocells and the first sparks of biology, and about the puzzles that still trouble him after so many years. His humor rose often, along with the soft trace of a Canadian accent.
His wife, Professor Yamuna Krishnan, stepped in and out of the room as we worked. She is a brilliant chemist in her own right, building molecular devices from DNA to study the inner life of cells. Her presence brought an extra warmth to the evening. Each time she walked into the room, something changed in him. His face softened and brightened in a way that needed no explanation. It was clear that their partnership carries both intellect and real affection.
In one portrait he sits in his study with two thick books stacked in front of him. One is his own doctoral thesis from his Cornell years. The other is Jennifer Doudna’s thesis, completed during her time in his lab. He rests his arms on them as if they are old companions. They are reminders of a long arc of discovery and mentorship, and of the people who have traveled through his scientific life.
Today Szostak continues his work at the University of Chicago. He studies the boundary where chemistry turns into biology, narrowing the gulf between the early Earth and the living world. His work remains steady and searching, not driven by the need to solve everything at once, but by the desire to understand something true about how life first appeared. In his hands, the origin of life feels less like an abstract mystery and more like a patient story unfolding, one experiment at a time.
