Journal of Astrobiology & Outreach

Abstrait

Search for Life on Mars and the Legacy of Gilbert Levin

N. Chandra Wickramasinghe

Gilbert Victor Levin (1923-2021) was the undisputed pioneer of Mars-life studies in the modern era. Along with Patricia Straat (1936-2020) he carried out the celebrated Labelled Release
Experiment, in which a radio-actively imbued nutrient broth was added to soil taken at the landing site of the spacecraft Viking spacecraft (1). The object of the experiment was to determine if
the nutrient was taken up by microbes that may have existed at or near the surface assuming that such microbes possessed similar metabolisms to those that exist on the Earth.