A Swedish physical chemist and Nobel Prize winner (1903), famous for his work on electrolytes, who was the first to present a detailed scientific hypothesis of panspermia (see life in the universe). In this, he argued that life arrived on Earth in the form of microscopic spores that had been propelled across interstellar space by the pressure of starlight. He published a seminal paper on the subject in 1903, followed by a popular book, Worlds in the Making (1908, first published in Swedish in 1906). In The Destinies of Stars (1918), he presented a carboniferous swamp version of Venus that remained in vogue for many years.
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