The intelligence of molecules. A conversation with Pauline Rudd

A new paradigm is beginning to emerge in biology, though for some biologists, the new is, in fact, the old. The reductive treatment of living organisms, as if the gene were all, is giving way to the realisation that intelligence, even agency, operates at all levels of biological systems, from the proteins up.

There is no-one better to talk to about this development and what it implies than Professor Pauline Rudd, a regular at the Realisation Festival and leading glycobiologist, recognised most recently by being awarded the Torbern Bergman Medal 2025. 

In this conversation with Mark Vernon, she explains what it is like to befriend biochemical molecules, to understand how they see the world around them, and thereby to form the science of their activity.

Pauline also explores how this integrates with her wider sense of the living world and its manifold intelligences. 

For more on Pauline's professional work see https://kemisamfundet.se/torbern-bergman-medal-2025-to-pauline-rudd-university-college-dublin/