Oren Harman Interviewed by Frederick Studemann

Popular science writer and historian Professor Oren Harman looks at the latest science on the origins of life and the universe and encourages a sense of wonder and mythology.

Harman says science has marginalised the myths that we traditionally used to explain our origins and questions whether that has made us better off.  He creates new myths to explain the origins of the universe including the Earth and moon presenting cosmological views of motherhood, a mitochondrion introducing sex and earth to the world and the loneliness of consciousness emerging from the memory of an octopus.

Harman is chair of the graduate programme in science, technology and society at Bar Ilan University, Israel. His books include The Man Who Invented the Chromosome and The Price of Altruism, which won the 2010 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Best Book of the Year in Science and Technology and was nominated for the Pulitzer prize. Here he talks to FT literary editor Fred Studeman.