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Lynn Margulis
Margulis in 2005
Born
Lynn Petra Alexander
(1938-03-05)March 5, 1938
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died
November 22, 2011(2011-11-22) (aged 73)
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
Alma mater
University of Chicago
University of Wisconsin–Madison
University of California, Berkeley
Known for
Symbiogenesis
Gaia hypothesis
Spouses
Carl Sagan
(m. 1957; div. 1965)
Thomas Margulis
(m. 1967; div. 1980)
Children
Dorion Sagan
Jeremy Sagan
Zachary Margulis-Ohnuma
Jennifer Margulis
Awards
National Medal of Science (1999)
William Procter Prize for Scientific Achievement (1999)
Darwin-Wallace Medal (2008)
Scientific career
Fields
Biology
Institutions
Brandeis University
Boston University
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Thesis
An Unusual Pattern of Thymidine Incorporation in Euglena (1965)
Doctoral advisor
Max Alfert
Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander;[1][2] March 5, 1938 – December 22, 2011)[3] was an American evolutionary biologist, and was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. Historian Jan Sapp has said that "Lynn Margulis's name is as synonymous with symbiosis as Charles Darwin's is with evolution."[4] In particular, Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei – an event Ernst Mayr called "perhaps the most important and dramatic event in the history of life"[5] – by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria. In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Margulis as one of the 50 most important women in science.[6]
Margulis was also the co-developer of the Gaia hypothesis with the British chemist James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions as a single self-regulating system, and was the principal defender and promulgator of the five-kingdom classification of Robert Whittaker.
Throughout her career, Margulis' work could arouse intense objection (one grant application elicited the response, "Your research is crap. Don't ever bother to apply again.")[4][7] and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells", appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals.[8] Still a junior faculty member at Boston University at the time, her theory that cell organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent bacteria was largely ignored for another decade, becoming widely accepted only after it was powerfully substantiated through genetic evidence.
Margulis was elected a member of the US National Academy of Sciences in 1983. President Bill Clinton presented her the National Medal of Science in 1999. The Linnean Society of London awarded her the Darwin-Wallace Medal in 2008.
Called "science's unruly earth mother",[9] a "vindicated heretic",[10] or a scientific "rebel",[11] Margulis was a strong critic of neo-Darwinism.[12] Her position sparked lifelong debate with leading neo-Darwinian biologists, including Richard Dawkins,[13] George C. Williams, and John Maynard Smith.[4]: 30, 67, 74–78, 88–92
Margulis' work on symbiosis and her endosymbiotic theory had important predecessors, going back to the mid-19th century – notably Andreas Franz Wilhelm Schimper, Konstantin Mereschkowski, Boris Kozo-Polyansky, and Ivan Wallin – and Margulis not only promoted greater recognition 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 her death.
Many of her major works, particularly those intended for a general readership, were collaboratively written with her son Dorion Sagan (whose father was Carl Sagan).
^Weber, Bruce (November 24, 2011). "Lynn Margulis, evolution theorist, dies at 73". The New York Times. Retrieved July 25, 2014.
^Lake, James A. (2011). "Lynn Margulis (1938–2011)". Nature. 480 (7378): 458. Bibcode:2011Natur.480..458L. doi:10.1038/480458a. PMID 22193092. S2CID 205069081.
^Barlow, Connie (1992). From Gaia to Selfish Genes: Selected writings in the life sciences (1st MIT Press paperback ed.). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. p. 47. ISBN 978-0-262-52178-9.
^Fiveash, Kelly (November 24, 2011). "'Rebel' biologist and neo-Darwinian skeptic Lynn Margulis dies". The Register. Retrieved December 19, 2014.
^Teresi, Dick (June 17, 2011). "Lynn Margulis says she's not controversial, she's right". Discover Magazine. Discover Interview. No. April 2011. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
[Broken link]
^Gilbert, Scott F.; Sapp, Jan; Tauber, Alfred I. (2012). "A Symbiotic View of Life: We have never been individuals". The Quarterly Review of Biology. 87 (4): 325–341. doi:10.1086/668166. PMID 23397797. S2CID 14279096.
Sapp has said that "LynnMargulis's name is as synonymous with symbiosis as Charles Darwin's is with evolution." In particular, Margulis transformed and fundamentally...
science, including Cosmic Apprentice, Cracking the Aging Code, and LynnMargulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel (the latter, about his mother)...
Evgeny Margulis (born 1955), Russian musician Grigory Margulis (born 1946), Russian mathematician, known for the Margulis lemma LynnMargulis (1938–2011)...
by the chemist James Lovelock and co-developed by the microbiologist LynnMargulis in the 1970s. Following the suggestion by his neighbour, novelist William...
Mereschkowski, and advanced and substantiated with microbiological evidence by LynnMargulis in 1967. Among the many lines of evidence supporting symbiogenesis are...
symbiogenesis (also known as the endosymbiotic theory) championed by LynnMargulis, a member of the archaea gained a bacterial cell as a component. The...
Adolf Meyer-Abich in 1943, and then apparently independently by Dr. LynnMargulis in her 1991 book Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation. The...
Cnidaria and Ctenophora. Complicating the issue is the 1997 work of LynnMargulis (revising an earlier model by Thomas Cavalier-Smith) that placed the...
an acceptable common synonym". In 1996, the evolutionary biologist LynnMargulis proposed to replace Kingdoms and Domains with "inclusive" names to create...
subkingdom consisting of Myxozoa, Placozoa, Cnidaria and Ctenophora. LynnMargulis and K. V. Schwartz later redefined Radiata in their Five Kingdom classification...
Appeal: The Dignity and Status of the Human Embryo, Mexico City, Mexico. LynnMargulis and Dorion Sagan – What Is Life? (1995). Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-81087-5...
self-reliant." Sagan was married three times. In 1957, he married biologist LynnMargulis. The couple had two children, Jeremy and Dorion Sagan; their marriage...
MacWhinney Eugene O. Major Ho-Kwang Mao John Marburger Noella Marcellino LynnMargulis Julius Marmur William F. Martin Bruce E. Maryanoff Cynthia A. Maryanoff...
is mostly used to designate the order, but is also used as a class. LynnMargulis, who initially accepted Kinetoplastida as an order in 1974, later placed...
context of geophysiology. The Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock, and LynnMargulis as well as the work of Hutton, Vladimir Vernadsky and Guy Murchie, have...
a key paper in Science providing the first experimental evidence of LynnMargulis' theory of the symbiogenetic origin of cellular mitochondria and chloroplasts...
cell, and that these organelles have their own genome. The biologist LynnMargulis, famous for her work on endosymbiosis, contended that symbiosis is a...
implications for female sexual behavior and sexual evolution". Like LynnMargulis and Natalie Angier, Miller believes, "The human clitoris shows no apparent...
ecological balance of different forms of life on the planet. It was LynnMargulis, the coauthor of Gaia hypothesis, who wrote in particular that only...
some biologists, such as Herbert Copeland, Robert H. Whittaker and LynnMargulis, advocated the revival of Haeckel's Protista or Hogg's Protoctista as...
in prokaryotic cells. The usage of the term was early supported by LynnMargulis, especially in support of endosymbiotic theory. The eukaryotic cilia...
are a major group of animals in the Five Kingdoms classification of LynnMargulis and K. V. Schwartz, comprising the Radiata and Bilateria – all animals...
include J.P. Schadé, Alan W. Schwartz, Sidney W. Fox, Michael Conrad, LynnMargulis, David B. Fogel, Gary B. Fogel, George Kampis, Francisco Lara-Ochoa...
controversial Gaia hypothesis was developed in the 1970s by James Lovelock and LynnMargulis; it asserts that living beings interact with Earth to form a complex...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (via Academy member LynnMargulis through a unique submission route in PNAS that allowed members to peer...
Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, co-written with his mother LynnMargulis. In the chapter "Truth of My Father", Sagan writes that his "father...
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