By David Corriveau, staff

Oct. 15, 2008

His online biography describes Dr. Robert M. Hazen as senior research scientist at the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s geophysical laboratory, as George Mason University’s Clarence Robinson professor of earth science…even as a professional trumpeter for symphony orchestras.

On Oct. 1 and 2, Norwich scientists greeted him as a rock star for his research on the evolution of life from the interaction of minerals with molecules.

“How many of you here have had a mineral named after you?” David Westerman, Norwich’s Dana Professor of geology, said in his introduction to the second of Hazen’s two lectures. “There are only 4,000-something minerals, and not many of them are named after people. He’s got one of them.”

The namesake of Hazenite — a magnesium phosphate that forms from microbes in California’s alkali-rich Mono Lake — thrilled more than the geology crowd, especially with his first-night lecture, “Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins.”

“We had about 300 students there,” Edward Carney, Norwich’s Dana Professor of biology, estimated after arranging the visit through the Sigma Xi honor society. “We had extra chairs, and students sitting in the aisles.”

Hazen described an experiment in which he subjected simple compounds to conditions simulating hydrothermal vents in the depths of Earth’s early oceans. The treatment turned the compounds into a yellow goo that Hazen then, at the suggestion of a friend, poured into water. The result: double-walled globs of inward-pointing, folded amino acids — the building blocks of life.

“The slide showing those results just stopped the breathing in the room,” Westerman recalled. “It was scary how closely the product resembled the walls of cells.”

Word got around enough the next day for another audience to fill at least two thirds of 085 for Hazen’s follow-up lecture at high noon: “Right and Left: Mineral Surfaces and the Origins of Biological Handedness.” The matinee crowd included biology major Jason Grupp, who the night before was returning with the Norwich soccer team from a game outside Boston.

“I thought his talk was very informative, but in language that I felt I could understand,” Grupp said. “He was able to incorporate scientific jargon, but in a way that even if you had little or no scientific background, you were able to understand everything he was saying.”

Which is why Sigma Xi is sending Hazen to colleges around the country from 2008-2010, as one of its distinguished lecturers. During his Norwich visit — which received sponsorship from Sigma Xi’s Vermont chapter, Norwich’s Larsen Science lecture series, the Faculty Development Committee, and the geology and biology departments —Hazen emphasized the need for experts in many fields to collaborate in the search for answers to the mysteries of the universe. He and colleagues at the Carnegie Institution and George Mason currently are working with geologists, biologists, chemists and physicists from the likes of George Washington University, the Smithsonian Institution, the University of Delaware, the University of Arizona, Johns Hopkins University, Carnegie-Mellon University and the Spanish Astrobiology Institute.

“There’s even a philosopher on this,” Hazen said during his second lecture. “It’s a very interdisciplinary field. That’s why it’s important for you to get as broad an education as possible.”

After the lecture, Hazen said that the Carnegie Institute doesn’t even divide into academic departments by specialty — a model he wishes that the people in charge of federal funding of research would follow.

“It’s all interconnected,” Hazen said. “The mineral world isn’t a separate realm. You need to let the questions drive you, not some artificial framing of what they do.

“With the origin of life, you can’t solve it with one discipline alone.”