Marcos Nogueira Eberlin

Senior Fellow, Center for Science and Culture

A member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, Marcos Eberlin received his PhD in chemistry from the University of Campinas (UNICAMP) and served as a postdoc at Purdue University. Back at UNICAMP, he founded and coordinated for 25 years the ThoMSon Mass Spectrometry (MS) Laboratory, making it an internationally recognized research center, one of the best-equipped and innovative MS laboratories worldwide.

Eberlin has published nearly 1,000 scientific articles and is a recipient of many awards and honors, including the title of Commander of the National Order of Scientific Merit (2005) from Brazil’s President, the Zeferino Vaz Award (2002) for excellence in teaching and research. He is the founder and current president of the Brazilian Society for Mass Spectrometry (BrMASS) — one of the largest MS societies. Eberlin is also President of the Brazilian Society for Intelligent Design (TDI Brasil) and the Director of the Discovery-Mackenzie Research Center for Science, Faith and Society at Mackenzie University in São Paulo, Brazil. Previous to writing Foresight, he published the bestselling book Fomos Planejados, the first book in Portuguese presenting the scientific evidence for intelligent design in nature.

Archives

The Venus Flytrap Takes a Bite Out of Darwinism

Marcos Eberlin
August 26, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Scotsman Andrew McDiarmid reads from Marcos Eberlin’s recent book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. In this excerpt, the distinguished Brazilian scientist highlights the challenge the Venus flytrap poses for evolutionary theory. Dr. Eberlin, the former president of the International Mass Spectrometry Association, describes the problem: The Venus flytrap, like all carnivorous plants, had no use for its insect-trapping function unless it also had an insect-digesting function. And vice versa. Did they really both evolve together? And how when there would be no functional advantage along much of the evolutionary pathway to the sophisticated finished system? Finally, how did this “evolutionary miracle” also happen in four other carnivorous plant genera? (See the Venus flytrap here, as mentioned in the podcast.)

Marcos Eberlin on Evolution’s Water-Gate Problem

Marcos Eberlin
August 14, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, internationally distinguished scientist Marcos Eberlin, author of the new book Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, talks about evolution’s “water gate” problem. There’s no conspiracy here, just life’s astonishing answer for admitting water into cells through “gates” while keeping lethal acidifying proteins out. There’s also a chicken-egg problem involving proteins and molecular chaperones. That and more, Eberlin argues, add up to the conclusion that life required foresight.

Chemist Marcos Eberlin on a Crisis for Chemical Evolution

Marcos Eberlin
August 12, 2019
Distinguished Brazilian organic chemist Marcos Eberlin talks about chemical evolution and the origin of life, pivoting off of comments by Rice University synthetic organic chemist James Tour in Science Uprising Episode 5, and off of Eberlin’s own Nobel laureate-endorsed book.

Brazilian Scientist Marcos Eberlin: Diarrhea by Design, Pt. 2

Marcos Eberlin
July 10, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid continues his conversation with distinguished Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin, author of close to 1,000 scientific articles and the Nobel laureate-endorsed Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose. Their topic again is the body’s surprisingly sophisticated, all-or-nothing system for flushing bad bacteria from our guts.

Foresight Author Marcos Eberlin: Diarrhea by Design

Marcos Eberlin
July 8, 2019
On this episode of ID the Future, Andrew McDiarmid talks with distinguished Brazilian scientist Marcos Eberlin, author of the Nobel laureate-endorsed Foresight: How the Chemistry of Life Reveals Planning and Purpose, about — of all things — diarrhea, the body’s surprisingly helpful (and sophisticated) system for flushing out that bad stuff.