Albert Libchaber is the Detlev W. Bronk Professor at Rockefeller University. He heads the Experimental Condensed Matter Physics Laboratory at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology. From 1983 to 1991, Libchaber served as professor at the University of Chicago, leaving to become a professor of physics at Princeton University in 1991. That year the NEC Research Institute in Princeton named him a fellow and, in 1993, he became the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at the university. He joined the Rockefeller faculty in 1994. Among his many honors, Libchaber is a chevalier of two French organizations, the ordre national de la Legion d'Honneur and the Palmes Academiques. He also is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a corresponding member of the French Academy of Science and a former MacArthur fellow. In 1986, he received the Wolf Prize for studies of the onset of turbulence. Professor Libchaber examines life as an effort to sustain computations and communication at the level of intracellular processes such as molecular proofreading of gene sequences, single artificial cells in the pursuit of synthetic life and multicellular systems such as neural computing networks. His lectures reviewed these research efforts.