From Friedrich Wöhler's historic demonstrations that inorganic ammonium cyanate can react to form organic urea, through Stanley Miller and Harold Urey's famous experiments forming amino acids and other biomolecules from simpler prebiotic compounds, to today's expansive search for the origins of life, this anthology of papers and presentations represents the steps leading up to Dr. Bruce Kowiatek's landmark breakthrough thesis, supported by experimentation, concerning the origins and evolution of the transfer RNA (tRNA) and DNA molecules, the process of protein translation, and the likeliest candidate for the Last Universal Common Ancestor (LUCA).