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While Jeremy England ‘99’s groundbreaking theory about the origin and evolution of life has recently gained international attention, the Exeter alum and MIT physicist reflects upon his time at the Academy.England, a New Hampshire native who came to Exeter as a new lower due to its advanced math classes, said he was surprised and pleased by the reaction to his research, which builds upon and extends existing theories of evolution to a physics-based examination of its energy sources on the biomolecular level.“What we have understood for a long time thanks to Darwin is why it is that living things seem to be so well adapted to their environment,” England said. “However, we can also look at things from the physics perspective, and I think what’s interesting there, is trying to explain what a plant or animal is doing, physically.”England has developed a mathematical equation for his findings, building off what has been nearly a lifelong relationship with advanced mathematics.“When I was a freshman in high school, I had been going to University of New Hampshire (UNH) to take math classes, which was logistically difficult and sort of isolating,” England said. “So [my parents and I] thought it would be a good idea for me to go somewhere to study advanced math with my peers.”England studied advanced mathematics at Exeter, and spoke highly of Rick Parris, an Exeter math instructor who passed away in 2012. While his professional career and higher education is defined by physics, he said that he “never actually took a class in physics while I was at Exeter, because my studies were a little too advanced for those classes.”England said he especially appreciated the knowledge he gained in the Humanities during his time on campus.“Ironically, the best things of being at Exeter for me didn’t have to do with math and science,” he said. “Exeter provided many opportunities for things that I wouldn’t likely experienced at another school. It’s relatively easy to study math or science in a cave by yourself, but the books at the library, the Harkness discussions, and the extracurriculars like debate and The Exonian were the most valuable experiences I took from my three years at Exeter.”Science instructors Bradford Robinson and Scott Saltman recalled England as a student. Robinson, who was an instructor during England’s time as a student remembered liking him and “knowing that he was really smart.”Saltman agreed, saying that England’s ability trumped Exeter’s science courses. “I recall his name as that of someone who was very good at science and that he was beyond some of the courses we offered at Exeter,” he said.As his theory was proposed fairly recently, many faculty in the department do not know about England. However, after reading an article on his new approach, Saltman and Robinson expressed their opinions on England’s ideas.“This is the first I have heard about [England’s theory], but it sounds very cool to my uninformed mind,” Robinson said. “I really can't evaluate his works, but it certainly does not surprise me that he is thinking big and getting the world to take notice.”Saltman said that he sees England’s work leading to success in the future. “It is an interesting notion because it provides ideas that are experiment-testable, and has a mathematical formula to it,” he said. “It also applies established physics to an area in which it has not been applied before and a question that has been out there for quite some time.”In biology, an organism’s evolution is often associated with the concept, “survival of the fittest”: England’s theory complements this on a biomolecular level. For live organisms with complex systems, the ones that are understood to be the “fittest” may refer to a group of organisms with outlying physical characteristics that prove to be advantageous in surviving. As a parallel, England’s theory establishes that an organism on the biomolecular level would have an upper hand in surviving if it is able to capture energy from the environment and dissipate that energy as heat more efficiently than its neighbors.England’s theory, which explains the beginnings of life in terms of physics, does not contradict other biological theories, like those of Darwin. It stems from existing theories in science that England’s team has built off of, with slight variations. “A living thing’s organization is adapted to the sources of energy in their environment,” he said. “We have a theoretical argument here, that we want to test. It starts to understand the circumstances where, if you have matter obeying Newton’s laws at some temperature, you can change one thing (like shining a light on it) we argue that there will be an emergence of organization from the environment.”England’s endeavors have received positive feedback from both physicists and wider support from the scientific community.England has been especially surprised by the reaction among the general public, despite the fact that England has not yet tested all aspects of his theory. “I have been a little taken aback by how much interest has been generated outside the scientific community.”“We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback,” England said. “In general, among other scientists, what people have been saying is that this is intriguing and they want to see where it leads. Many people in the science community are interested, but want to make it a more testable set of notions, because until you do that, there isn’t really any point in embracing something because it sounds cool.”While he was sure to articulate that he cannot be certain of the significance of this work, “It’s very fun to work on ideas like this because it feels like there’s a large potential impact. It feels to me like it’s a lot more noteworthy than other things I’ve done to date, but no one can be sure.”