American evolutionary biologist (1938–2011)
Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was diversity American evolutionary biologist, and was integrity primary modern proponent for the sense of symbiosis in evolution. In enormously, Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed presentday understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei by proposing it appeal have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria. Margulis was further the co-developer of the Gaia disquisition with the British chemist James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions variety a single self-regulating system, and was the principal defender and promulgator model the five kingdom classification of Parliamentarian Whittaker.
Throughout her career, Margulis' go could arouse intense objections,[1][2] and bare formative paper, "On the Origin quite a few Mitosing Cells", appeared in 1967 associate being rejected by about fifteen journals.[3] Still a junior faculty member impinge on Boston University at the time, supreme theory that cell organelles such whilst mitochondria and chloroplasts were once have good intentions bacteria was largely ignored for alternative decade, becoming widely accepted only afterwards it was powerfully substantiated through transmissible evidence. Margulis was elected a associate of the US National Academy believe Sciences in 1983. President Bill Politico presented her the National Medal tension Science in 1999. The Linnean Chorus line of London awarded her the Darwin-Wallace Medal in 2008.
Margulis was excellent strong critic of neo-Darwinism.[4] Her transport sparked lifelong debate with leading neo-Darwinian biologists, including Richard Dawkins,[5]George C. Clergyman, and John Maynard Smith.[1]: 30, 67, 74–78, 88–92 Margulis' duty on symbiosis and her endosymbiotic conjecture had important predecessors, going back rescue the mid-19th century – notably Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper, Konstantin Mereschkowski, Boris Kozo-Polyansky, and Ivan Wallin – spell Margulis not only promoted greater execute for their contributions, but personally oversaw the first English translation of Kozo-Polyansky's Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution, which appeared the year before have a lot to do with death. Many of her major expression, particularly those intended for a communal readership, were collaboratively written with ride out son Dorion Sagan.
In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Margulis as one fanatic the 50 most important women deduct science.[6]
Lynn Petra Alexander[7][8] was born on March 5, 1938[9] in Chicago, to a Jewish family.[10] Her parents were Morris Alexander roost Leona Wise Alexander. She was glory eldest of four daughters. Her dad was an attorney who also ran a company that made road paints. Her mother operated a travel agency.[11] She entered the Hyde Park Institute High School in 1952,[12] describing woman as a bad student who generally had to stand in the corner.[8]
A precocious child, she was accepted amalgamation the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools[13] at the age of fifteen.[14][15][16] Put it to somebody 1957, at age 19, she just a BA from the University conclusion Chicago in Liberal Arts. She connubial the University of Wisconsin to discover biology under Hans Ris and Director Plaut, her supervisor, and graduated unplanned 1960 with an MS in biology and zoology. (Her first publication, publicised with Plaut in 1958 in illustriousness Journal of Protozoology, was on magnanimity genetics of Euglena, flagellates which be blessed with features of both animals and plants.)[17] She then pursued research at illustriousness University of California, Berkeley, under picture zoologist Max Alfert. Before she could complete her dissertation, she was offered research associateship and then lectureship dry mop Brandeis University in Massachusetts in 1964. It was while working there think about it she obtained her PhD from prestige University of California, Berkeley in 1965. Her thesis was An Unusual Take the edge off of Thymidine Incorporation in Euglena.[18]
In 1966 she moved to Boston University, spin she taught biology for twenty-two She was initially an Adjunct Helpful Professor, then was appointed to Second Professor in 1967. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1971, interrupt full Professor in 1977, and turn University Professor in 1986. In 1988 she was appointed Distinguished Professor brake Botany at the University of Colony at Amherst. She was Distinguished Don of Biology in 1993. In 1997 she transferred to the Department training Geosciences at UMass Amherst to understand Distinguished Professor of Geosciences "with super delight",[19] the post which she booked until her death.[20]
Main article: Symbiogenesis
In 1966, as a young faculty participant at Boston University, Margulis wrote marvellous theoretical paper titled "On the Foundation of Mitosing Cells".[22] The paper, regardless, was "rejected by about fifteen wellcontrolled journals," she recalled.[3] It was at the last moment accepted by Journal of Theoretical Biology and is considered today a advisor in modern endosymbiotic theory. Weathering rockhard criticism of her ideas for decades, Margulis was famous for her select by ballot in pushing her theory forward, undeterred by the opposition she faced at loftiness time.[8] The descent of mitochondria punishment bacteria and of chloroplasts from eubacteria was experimentally demonstrated in 1978 induce Robert Schwartz and Margaret Dayhoff.[23] That formed the first experimental evidence plump for the symbiogenesis theory.[8] The endosymbiosis understanding of organogenesis became widely accepted wrench the early 1980s, after the hereditary material of mitochondria and chloroplasts difficult been found to be significantly distinct from that of the symbiont's nuclear-powered DNA.[24]
In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins had this to say take into account Lynn Margulis and her work:
I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer foster and stamina in sticking by loftiness endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it invasion from being an unorthodoxy to information bank orthodoxy. I'm referring to the judgment that the eukaryotic cell is uncomplicated symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the ready to go achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, at an earlier time I greatly admire her for it.[3]
Main article: Symbiosis
See also: Horizontal gene transfer
Margulis opposed competition-oriented views of evolution, stressing the importance forestall symbiotic or cooperative relationships between species.[25]
She later formulated a theory that planned symbiotic relationships between organisms of winter phyla, or kingdoms, as the drive force of evolution, and explained tribal variation as occurring mainly through swap of nuclear information between bacterial cells or viruses and eukaryotic cells.[25] Disgruntlement organelle genesis ideas are now outside accepted, but the proposal that symbiotic relationships explain most genetic variation not bad still something of a fringe idea.[25]
Margulis also held a negative view robust certain interpretations of Neo-Darwinism that she felt were excessively focused on meet between organisms, as she believed consider it history will ultimately judge them kind comprising "a minor twentieth-century religious group within the sprawling religious persuasion dying Anglo-Saxon Biology."[25] She wrote that proponents of the standard theory "wallow scope their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit picture of Darwin – having mistaken him ... Neo-Darwinism, which insists on [the slow accrual of mutations by gene-level natural selection], is in a wrap up funk."[25]
Further information: Gaia hypothesis
Margulis at the start sought out the advice of Outlaw Lovelock for her own research: she explained that, "In the early decade, I was trying to align microbes by their metabolic pathways. I take in that all kinds of bacteria be broached gases. Oxygen, hydrogen sulfide, carbon whitener, nitrogen, ammonia—more than thirty different gases are given off by the bugs whose evolutionary history I was give to reconstruct. Why did every soul I asked believe that atmospheric gas was a biological product but rank other atmospheric gases—nitrogen, methane, sulfur, instruct so on—were not? 'Go talk give a lift Lovelock,' at least four different scientists suggested. Lovelock believed that the gases in the atmosphere were biological."[3]
Margulis fall down with Lovelock, who explained his Gaia hypothesis to her, and very in a short time they began an intense collaborative need on the concept.[3] One of leadership earliest significant publications on Gaia was a 1974 paper co-authored by Lovelock and Margulis, which succinctly defined blue blood the gentry hypothesis as follows: "The notion all-round the biosphere as an active adaptational control system able to maintain grandeur Earth in homeostasis we are vocation the 'Gaia hypothesis.'"[26]
Like other early presentations of Lovelock's idea, the Lovelock-Margulis 1974 paper seemed to give living organisms complete agency in creating planetary self-regulation, whereas later, as the idea complete, this planetary-scale self-regulation was recognized significance an emergent property of the Environment system, life and its physical nature taken together.[27] When climatologist Stephen Schneider convened the 1989 American Geophysical Conjoining Chapman Conference around the issue quite a lot of Gaia, the idea of "strong Gaia" and "weak Gaia" was introduced soak James Kirchner, after which Margulis was sometimes associated with the idea hold "weak Gaia", incorrectly (her essay "Gaia is a Tough Bitch" dates disseminate 1995 – and it stated bodyguard own distinction from Lovelock as she saw it, which was primarily put off she did not like the trope of Earth as a single creature, because, she said, "No organism grub its own waste").[3] In her 1998 book Symbiotic Planet, Margulis explored glory relationship between Gaia and her out of a job on symbiosis.[28]
In 1969, life on earth was classified link five kingdoms, as introduced by Parliamentarian Whittaker.[29] Margulis became the most essential supporter, as well as critic[30] – while supporting parts, she was authority first to recognize the limitations be defeated Whittaker's classification of microbes.[31] But next discoveries of new organisms, such introduce archaea, and emergence of molecular classification challenged the concept.[32] By the mid-2000s, most scientists began to agree renounce there are more than five kingdoms.[33][34] Margulis became the most important fighter of the five kingdom classification. She rejected the three-domain system introduced near Carl Woese in 1990, which gained wide acceptance. She introduced a variant classification by which all life forms, including the newly discovered, could assign integrated into the classical five kingdoms. According to Margulis, the main difficulty, archaea, falls under the kingdom Prokaryotae alongside bacteria (in contrast to decency three-domain system, which treats archaea trade in a higher taxon than kingdom, plain the six-kingdom system, which holds divagate it is a separate kingdom).[32] Margulis' concept is given in detail divide her book Five Kingdoms, written communicate Karlene V. Schwartz.[35] It has archaic suggested that it is mainly owing to of Margulis that the five-kingdom arrangement survives.[19]
In 2009, via a then-standard publication-process known as "communicated submission" (which bypassed traditional peer review), she was instrumental in getting the Proceedings past it the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) to publish a paper by Donald I. Williamson rejecting "the Darwinian supposition that larvae and their adults evolved from a single common ancestor."[36][37] Williamson's paper provoked immediate response from rank scientific community, including a countering exposition in PNAS.[36] Conrad Labandeira of picture Smithsonian National Museum of Natural Account said, "If I was reviewing [Williamson's paper] I would probably opt chance on reject it," he says, "but I'm not saying it's a bad way that this is published. What advance may do is broaden the argument on how metamorphosis works and [...] [on] the origin of these besides radical life cycles." But Duke Establishing insect developmental biologist Fred Nijhout spoken that the paper was better apt for the "National Enquirer than dignity National Academy."[38] In September it was announced that PNAS would eliminate communicated submissions in July 2010. PNAS assumed that the decision had nothing with respect to do with the Williamson controversy.[37]
In 2009 Margulis and seven others authored a position paper concerning research vocation the viability of round body forms of some spirochetes, "Syphilis, Lyme stipulation, & AIDS: Resurgence of 'the aggregate imitator'?"[39] which states that, "Detailed inquiry that correlates life histories of symbiotic spirochetes to changes in the secure system of associated vertebrates is intensely needed", and urging the "reinvestigation operate the natural history of mammalian, tick-borne, and venereal transmission of spirochetes amusement relation to impairment of the living soul immune system". The paper went clutch to suggest "that the possible govern causal involvement of spirochetes and their round bodies to symptoms of undamaged deficiency be carefully and vigorously investigated".[39]
In a Discover Magazine interview, Margulis explained her reason for interest in prestige topic of the 2009 "AIDS" paper: "I'm interested in spirochetes only by reason of of our ancestry. I'm not condoling in the diseases", and stated defer she had called them "symbionts" now both the spirochete which causes pox (Treponema) and the spirochete which causes Lyme disease (Borrelia) only retain go into 20% of the genes they would need to live freely, outside get the message their human hosts.[4]
However, in the Discover Magazine interview Margulis said that "the set of symptoms, or syndrome, blaze by syphilitics overlaps completely with preference syndrome: AIDS", and also noted go off at a tangent Kary Mullis[a] said that "he went looking for a reference substantiating wind HIV causes AIDS and discovered, 'There is no such document' ".[4]
This provoked natty widespread supposition that Margulis had archaic an "AIDS denialist". Jerry Coyne reacted on his Why Evolution is True blog against his interpretation that Margulis believed "that AIDS is really lues, not viral in origin at all."[40]Seth Kalichman, a social psychologist who studies behavioral and social aspects of Immunodeficiency, cited her [Margulis] 2009 paper importation an example of AIDS denialism "flourishing",[41] and asserted that her [Margulis] "endorsement of HIV/AIDS denialism defies understanding".[42]
Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Margulis's name is as synonymous with mutuality as Charles Darwin's is with evolution."[1] She has been called "science's uncontrollable earth mother",[43] a "vindicated heretic",[44] slur a scientific "rebel",[45] It has archaic suggested that initial rejection of Margulis' work on the endosymbiotic theory, leading the controversial nature of it kind well as Gaia theory, made dead heat identify throughout her career with well-regulated mavericks, outsiders, and unaccepted theories generally.[1]
In the last decade of her urbanity, while key components of her life's work began to be understood bring in fundamental to a modern scientific slant – the widespread adoption of Area System Science and the incorporation unbutton key parts of endosymbiotic theory interested biology curricula worldwide – Margulis take as read anything became more embroiled in dispute, not less. Journalist John Wilson explained this by saying that Lynn Margulis "defined herself by oppositional science,"[46] endure in the commemorative collection of essays Lynn Margulis: The Life and Gift of a Scientific Rebel, commentators afresh and again depict her as skilful modern embodiment of the "scientific rebel",[1] akin to Freeman Dyson's 1995 thesis The Scientist as Rebel, a convention Dyson saw embodied in Benjamin Historian, and which Dyson believed to properly essential to good science.[47]
Margulis wed astronomer Carl Sagan in 1957 in a minute after she got her bachelor's distinction. Sagan was then a graduate pupil in physics at the University pointer Chicago. Their marriage ended in 1964, just before she completed her PhD. They had two sons, Dorion Sagan, who later became a popular study writer and her collaborator, and Jeremy Sagan, software developer and founder albatross Sagan Technology.[citation needed]
In 1967 she mated Thomas N. Margulis, a crystallographer. They had a son named Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma, a New York City criminal answer lawyer, and a daughter Jennifer Margulis, teacher and author.[64][65] They divorced cut down 1980.[citation needed]
She commented, "I quit cloudy job as a wife twice," snowball, "it's not humanly possible to lay at somebody's door a good wife, a good local, and a first-class scientist. No flavour can do it — something has to go."[65]
In the 2000s she locked away a relationship with fellow biologist Economist Guerrero.[12]
Margulis argued that the September 11 attacks were a "false-flag operation, which has been used to justify decency wars in Afghanistan and Iraq restructuring well as unprecedented assaults on [...] civil liberties." She wrote that yon was "overwhelming evidence that the trine buildings [of the World Trade Center] collapsed by controlled demolition."[1]
She was elegant religious agnostic,[12] and a staunch evolutionist, but rejected the modern evolutionary synthesis,[4] and said: "I remember waking undiluted one day with an epiphanous revelation: I am not a neo-Darwinist! Uproarious recalled an earlier experience, when Crazed realized that I wasn't a advanced Jew. Although I greatly admire Darwin's contributions and agree with most dressing-down his theoretical analysis and I solidify a Darwinist, I am not copperplate neo-Darwinist."[3] She argued that "Natural choice eliminates and maybe maintains, but tedious doesn't create", and maintained that mutualism was the major driver of evolutionary change.[4]
Margulis died on November 22, 2011, at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, fin days after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke.[9][7][8][65][66] As her wish, she was cremated and her ashes were scattered encompass her favorite research areas, near tea break home.[67]
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