"Your research is crap. Don't ever bother to apply again."
Everyone should know the story of this great woman - and the obstacles she overcame. She was importantly right but essentially ostracized from "respectable science" for decades.
Scientific career
Lynn Margulis 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.
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 belatedly 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
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).
Personal life and insights
She was born Lynn Petra Alexander on March 5, 1938 in Chicago, Illinois. She became a religious agnostic,[16] and a staunch evolutionist, but rejected the modern evolutionary synthesis,[12] and said: "I remember waking up one day with an epiphanous revelation: I am not a neo-Darwinist! I recalled an earlier experience, when I realized that I wasn't a humanistic Jew. Although I greatly admire Darwin's contributions and agree with most of his theoretical analysis and I am a Darwinist, I am not a neo-Darwinist."[8] She argued that "Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create", and maintained that symbiosis was the major driver of evolutionary change.[12]
A Major Contribution
In 1966, as a young faculty member at Boston University, Margulis wrote a theoretical paper titled "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells".[31] The paper, however, was "rejected by about fifteen scientific journals," she recalled.[8] It was finally accepted by Journal of Theoretical Biology and is considered today a landmark in modern endosymbiotic theory.
Lynn Margulis 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.
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 belatedly 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
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).
Personal life and insights
She was born Lynn Petra Alexander on March 5, 1938 in Chicago, Illinois. She became a religious agnostic,[16] and a staunch evolutionist, but rejected the modern evolutionary synthesis,[12] and said: "I remember waking up one day with an epiphanous revelation: I am not a neo-Darwinist! I recalled an earlier experience, when I realized that I wasn't a humanistic Jew. Although I greatly admire Darwin's contributions and agree with most of his theoretical analysis and I am a Darwinist, I am not a neo-Darwinist."[8] She argued that "Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn't create", and maintained that symbiosis was the major driver of evolutionary change.[12]
A Major Contribution
In 1966, as a young faculty member at Boston University, Margulis wrote a theoretical paper titled "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells".[31] The paper, however, was "rejected by about fifteen scientific journals," she recalled.[8] It was finally accepted by Journal of Theoretical Biology and is considered today a landmark in modern endosymbiotic theory.
Weathering constant criticism of her ideas for decades, Margulis was famous for her tenacity in pushing her theory forward, despite the opposition she faced at the time.[2] The descent of mitochondria from bacteria and of chloroplasts from cyanobacteria was experimentally demonstrated in 1978 by Robert Schwartz and Margaret Dayhoff.[32] This formed the first experimental evidence for the symbiogenesis theory.[2] The endosymbiosis theory of organogenesis became widely accepted in the early 1980s, after the genetic material of mitochondria and chloroplasts had been found to be significantly different from that of the symbiont's nuclear DNA.[33]
In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins - a former critic - had this to say about Lynn Margulis and her work:
In 1995, English evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins - a former critic - had this to say about Lynn Margulis and her work:
"I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it.[8]
Other info:
Born: Lynn Petra Alexander
March 5, 1938
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: November 22, 2011 (aged 73)
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
March 5, 1938
Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Died: November 22, 2011 (aged 73)
Amherst, Massachusetts, U.S.
The above makes me wonder how simbiosis could be used to explain the development of high-diversity ecosystems. We often think of high-diversity ecosystems as being ones with checks and balances that give no single species a competitive edge. However, we tend to ignore that species cooperate. This is likely because we don’t understand the roles different species perform that allows them to help each other.
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