The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life

Pekka Teerikorpi defended his doctoral thesis at the University of Turku (1981), where he worked after that at teaching and research positions (now retired, but affiliated as adjunct professor). He has studied extragalactic astronomy and cosmology, especially questions related to the cosmic distance scale, the expansion rate of the universe (the Hubble constant) and dark energy. He has also researched interstellar dust, the rotation of the Milky Way and active galactic nuclei. He is a coauthor of the books Discovery of Cosmic Fractals (World Scientific 2002), The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life (Springer 2009) Fundamental Questions of Practical Cosmology (Springer 2012), and Paths to Dark Energy (De Gruyer 2012). Additionally, he has written several books in Finnish about the history and spirit of astronomy.

Gene Byrd (B.S Texas A&M University 1968; PhD 1974 from the Univ. ofTexas) is a Professor of Astronomy (emeritus) at the University of Alabama. His career has been a mixture of teaching, research and service. He is a University of Alabama College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Teaching Fellow and has published texts and research on teaching. He studies the theory and observations of the dynamics of galaxies, discovering the pattern in NGC4622, which, counterintuitively, has inner and outer spiral arms winding in opposite directions. Dr. Byrd served as Secretary and Chair of the American Astronomical Society's Division on Dynamical Astronomy. He is authored over 100 articles and books, including a senior/graduate level text, Paths to Dark Energy: Theory and Observation (De Gryuter 2012), along with articles on teaching and the history of astronomy.

Harry Lehto got his MSc in Astronomy at the Univ. of Turku, at the faculty of Mathematics and Natural Science, in 1982, and his PhD at the Univ. of Virginia, Charlottesville, Dept. of Astronomy, in 1989. After his degree he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford and University of Sourhampton, UK, and since 1991, at the University of Turku, Tuorla Observatory, Dept of Physics and Astronomy, in various teaching and research positions. He was the director of the observatory from 2010 to 2013. His career has covered observations from X-rays to radio waves, and included analysis of time series in nearly all of his work. The work has covered quasars, magnetic cataclysmic variable stars and dynamical studies of planetary systems. He has a long and profound interest in nature. He took part in the Rosetta mission studying the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko with the COSIMA instrument in search of elements and molecules important for prebiotic evolution. Since the early 2000's, he has been teaching courses on Astrobiology and has also written multiple scientific and popular articles on this field.

Kirsi Lehto got her MSc at the Univ. of Helsinki, faculty of Agriculture, in 1981, and her PhD at the Univ. of California, Riverside, Dept. of Plant Pathology, in 1989. After her degree she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Imperial College, London, and since 2001, at the University of Turku, at the Departments of Biology and Biochemistry, in various teaching and research positions. Her earlier research focused on the various gene expression regulatory mechanisms of small RNA viruses, and in later years, on the role of RNA silencing and silencing suppression in the plant-virus interactions. Since the early 2000's she has been teaching courses on Astrobiology and on the theories of the Origin of Life, and has also written multiple scientific and popular articles on these topics.

Mauri J. Valtonen graduated from the University of Helsinki in 1968, and did graduate work at the University of Cambridge in 1971-1974 on the three-body problem and the slingshot theory of radio sources. In 1976, he joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Alabama. After returning to Finland, he became professor of astronomy at the University of Turku. He has collaborated with his co-authors on cosmological topics such as dark matter, simulations of disk galaxies and the binary black hole system OJ287. Dr. Valtonen is a coauthor of The Three-body Problem (Cambridge UP 2006), Cosmology (URSS, Moscow 2007), The Evolving Universe and the Origin of Life (Springer 2009), Paths to Dark Energy (De Gruyter 2012) and The Three-body Problem from Pythagoras to Hawking (Springer 2016) as well as a number of books in the Finnish language.