Pier Luigi Luisi

Pier Luigi Luisi (born 23 May 1938) is an Italian Professor Emeritus of Chemistry, who has worked in Switzerland.

When he is not doing science, natural scientist Pier Luigi Luisi looks for the purpose of life within the structure and function of life itself and extrapolates life's purpose from the activities of living organisms. He graduated from the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.

He holds the view the natural scientists should look for the purpose of life within the structure and function of life itself.

Luisi has suggested that the concepts of "purpose" offered by science are a "mere mental construction" which depend on the social and religious traditions of individuals in the scientific community.

The "purpose" is a mere mental construction of the scientist observer, it depends on his/her intelligence, on his race, religion, scientific beliefs. This implies that the notion of purpose is not objective, but it is contextual, changing in time and is probably different in different societies and traditions and point of time.

In 1985 Luisi founded the "Cortona Week", an international, multi-discipline conference that studies "Natural Sciences and the Wholeness of Life". Currently he is director of the Synthetic Biology and Supramolecular Chemistry Laboratory and professor in the Biology Department at the Roma Tre University.

In 2015, he started contributing on a monthly basis to the Wall Street International Magazine, by publishing his recent studies and reportages.

• The Systems View of Life: A Unifying Vision (with Fritjof Capra)
• The Emergence of Life: From Chemical Origins to Synthetic Biology
• Giant Vesicles (Perspectives in Supramolecular Chemistry) (with Peter Walde)
• With Zara Houshmand, Mind and life: discussions with the Dalai Lama on the nature of reality, Columbia University Press, 2009, ISBN 0-231-14550-0, ISBN 978-0-231-14550-3