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Jeremy England

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For the member of the Mississippi State Senate, see Jeremy England (politician).
Jeremy England
Born1982
Boston, Massachusetts
NationalityAmerican
Alma mater
Known forDissipation-driven adaptation hypothesis of abiogenesis
Scientific career
FieldsBiophysics
InstitutionsMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Georgia Institute of Technology
GlaxoSmithKline
Bar-Ilan University
ThesisTheory and Simulation of Explicit Solvent Effects on Protein Folding in Vitro and in Vivo (2009)
Doctoral advisorVijay S. Pande[1]
Websitewww.englandlab.com

Jeremy England is an American physicist and Orthodox rabbi. He is noted for his argument that the spontaneous emergence of life may be explained by the better heat dissipation of more organized arrangement of molecules compared to that of groups of less organized molecules. [3][4][5] England terms his interpretation "dissipation-driven adaptation".[6]

Early life and conversion to Orthodox Judaism[edit]

England was born in Boston, Massachusetts[7] and raised in a college town in New Hampshire.[8] His mother was the daughter of Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors, while his father was a non-observant Lutheran. He was raised Jewish but did not seriously study Judaism and the Torah until he attended graduate school at Oxford University.[8] He now considers himself an Orthodox Jew[8] who has been inspired by Zionist ideology.[9]

England earned a bachelor's degree in biochemistry from Harvard in 2003. After being awarded a Rhodes Scholarship,[10] he studied at St. John's College, Oxford, from 2003 until 2005. He earned his Ph.D. in physics at Stanford in 2009 under Vijay S. Pande,[11][2] where he was supported by a Hertz Fellowship.[12] In 2011, he joined MIT as an assistant professor of physics;[7] subsequently, he was associate professor of physics from 2017 until 2019.[11][13] In 2019, he left MIT to join GlaxoSmithKline as a senior director in artificial intelligence and machine learning;[14] he was promoted to vice president in 2023.[11][13] He was a principal research scientist at Georgia Tech from 2020 until 2023, when he joined Bar-Ilan University as a visiting professor of physics.[13]

Views on Palestinians[edit]

In 2008 England wrote an article for The Stanford Review that contested Palestinians' right to the land occupied by Israel since 1948. He expressed a desire to see Palestinians removed from this occupied territory, wishing the refugees of the Nakba "well in finding homes outside the Land of Israel".[15] In 2024 England wrote an article for Tablet Magazine in which he advocated for the conquest, annexation and settling of the Gaza Strip by Jews and Zionist-sympathizing gentiles.[16]

Theoretical work[edit]

England has developed a hypothesis of the physics of the origins of life, based on a mechanism which he calls dissipation-driven adaptation.[3][5][6] The hypothesis holds that random groups of molecules can self-organize to more reliably absorb and dissipate heat from the environment, and that such self-organizing systems are an inherent part of the physical world.[8]

In popular culture[edit]

A fictionalized version of England and his theory are featured in the novel Origin by Dan Brown. England, who is an Orthodox Jew and ordained rabbi,[17] has written that he strongly rejects Brown's depiction of him as being a scientist who is unconcerned with spiritual matters.[18]

Awards[edit]

England was selected as a Rhodes Scholar and Hertz fellow in 2003.[10][12] In 2012, he was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 for his scientific achievements.[12][19] In 2021, he was given the Irwin Oppenheim Award by the American Physical Society alongside Sumantra Sarkar.[20]

See also[edit]

References[edit]

  1. ^ England, Jeremy (2009). Theory and Simulation of Explicit Solvent Effects on Protein Folding in Vitro and in Vivo (PhD thesis). ISBN 978-1243607553.
  2. ^ a b Curriculum Vitae- Jeremy L. England (PDF), EnglandLab.com, retrieved December 17, 2014
  3. ^ a b Wolchover, Natalie (Jan 28, 2014). "A New Physics Theory of Life". Scientific American. Retrieved Dec 11, 2014.
  4. ^ Tafarella, Santi (Jan 28, 2014). "Dissipation-Driven Adaptive Organization: Is Jeremy England The Next Charles Darwin?". Prometheus Unbound. Retrieved Dec 11, 2014.
  5. ^ a b Jones, Orion (Dec 9, 2014). "MIT Physicist Proposes New "Meaning of Life"". Big Think. Retrieved Dec 11, 2014.
  6. ^ a b Perunov, Nikolai; Marsland, Robert; England, Jeremy (2016). "Statistical Physics of Adaptation". Physical Review X. 6 (2): 021036. arXiv:1412.1875. Bibcode:2016PhRvX...6b1036P. doi:10.1103/PhysRevX.6.021036. S2CID 15928632.
  7. ^ a b Faculty biography of Jeremy England Archived 2019-04-29 at the Wayback Machine, MIT Dept. of Physics, accessed Jan. 9, 2015.
  8. ^ a b c d Meet the Orthodox Jewish physicist rethinking the origins of life" by Simona Weinglass, The Times of Israel, October 29, 2015.
  9. ^ Bashevkin, David (Nov 16, 2020). "WHAT DOES A SCIENTIST SEE IN THE TORAH?". 18Forty. Retrieved Nov 1, 2023.
  10. ^ a b Ken Gewertz (2002-12-12). "Five Harvard students selected as 2003 Rhodes Scholars".
  11. ^ a b c England, Jeremy. "Curriculum Vitae". englandlab. Archived from the original on April 15, 2017. Retrieved April 14, 2017.
  12. ^ a b c "Jeremy England - Fanny and John Hertz Foundation". Hertz Foundation. Retrieved 2021-01-29.
  13. ^ a b c England, Jeremy. "Jeremy England | LinkedIn". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2024-01-12.
  14. ^ "GlaxoSmithKline recruits a new coach and top player for their AI/ML team out of Genentech and MIT". San Francisco Biotechnology Network News. July 11, 2019. Archived from the original on July 28, 2019. Retrieved July 28, 2019.
  15. ^ England, Jeremy (Jun 11, 2008). "Is This Land Your Land?". Medium. Retrieved Nov 1, 2023.
  16. ^ England, Jeremy (2024-05-28). "Live by the Law or Die on the Cross". Tablet Magazine. Retrieved 2024-05-30.
  17. ^ "Judaism, Physics and Biology on the Origins of Life: A Conversation with Dr. Jeremy England". Sinai and Synapses. 16 December 2020. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  18. ^ England, Jeremy (2017-10-12). "Dan Brown Can't Cite Me to Disprove God". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2022-10-17.
  19. ^ "Jeremy England". Forbes. Retrieved 2021-01-29.[Forbes]
  20. ^ "Irwin Oppenheim Award". American Physical Society. Retrieved 2021-01-28.

^ Forbes.com seems to have lost most of the content on his profile and lists a broken link to the 2012 30-under-30 in Science. The Hertz Foundation profile mentions the 2018 Forbes 30-under-30. However, neither the 2012 nor the 2018 official listing pages on Forbes.com list England.

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

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