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Lynn Margulis
Sign in to saveAlso known as Margulis, Lynn Petra Alexander, Lynn Sagan
American evolutionary biologist (1938–2011)
OverviewAI-generated
Lynn Margulis (1938–2011) was an American university teacher, botanist, zoologist, and ecologist. Born in Chicago, she worked in the field of cell biology. Her academic career included positions at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and Boston University. She was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Margulis received several honors, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, the National Medal of Science, and the Darwin–Wallace Medal. She was educated at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, Harvard University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her work was influenced by Ivan Wallin.
She was married to Carl Sagan, and they had a child named Dorion Sagan. Margulis died in Amherst. Her archives are held at the Library of Congress. Among her published works are *Five kingdoms*, *The microcosmos coloring book*, and *Evolución ambiental*.
Synthesized by Vinony from 37 facts across 7 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, MusicBrainz, Last.fm, Vinony collections, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Person · Open Library
- Born
- 1938
- Died
- 2011
- Works
- 88
Top works
- Miḳroḳosmos
- Els inicis de la vida
- Five kingdoms
- The microcosmos coloring book
- Evolución ambiental
via Open Library + Wikidata
Music · MusicBrainz
- Type
- Person
- Gender
- Female
- Origin
- United States
- Active from
- 1938
- Active to
- 2011
via MusicBrainz · CC0
Listeners · Last.fm
- Listeners
- 10
- Total plays
- 12
<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Lynn+Margulis">Read more on Last.fm</a>
Recent publications · Crossref
5 total works indexed
- Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome
· 2001 · cited 18,617x
- A global reference for human genetic variation
· 2015 · cited 17,787x
- Birds of a Feather: Homophily in Social Networks
· 2001 · cited 13,632x
- Minimal information for studies of extracellular vesicles 2018 (MISEV2018): a position statement of the International Society for Extracellular Vesicles and update of the MISEV2014 guidelines
· 2018 · cited 9,654x
- The Fagerström Test for Nicotine Dependence: a revision of the Fagerstrom Tolerance Questionnaire
· 1991 · cited 8,476x
via Crossref · CC0
Quotes
- “Identity is not an object; it is a process with addresses for all the different directions and dimensions in which it moves, and so it cannot so easily be fixed with a single number.”
- “The oxygen crisis that began only two billion years ago prompted the evolution of respiring bacteria. These microbes that used oxygen to derive biochemical energy more efficiently than ever before eventually took over most of the world. Some of the oxygen-breathing bacteria became symbiotic, merging with different (oxygen-eschewing) bacteria to form nucleated cells, which, after becoming sexual, evolved into fungi, plants, and animals.”
- “[The smallest bacterium] is so much more like people than Stanley Miller’s mixtures of chemicals, because it already has these system properties. So to go from a bacterium to people is less of a step than to go from a mixture of amino acids to that bacterium.”
- “Why does everybody agree that atmospheric oxygen... comes from life, but no one speaks about the other gases coming from life?”
- “From the paramecium to the human race, all life forms are meticulously organized, sophisticated aggregates of evolving microbial life. Far from leaving microorganisms behind on an evolutionary "ladder," we are both surrounded by them and composed of them. Having survived in an unbroken line from the beginnings of life, all organisms today are equally evolved.”
- “The view of evolution as a chronic bloody competition among individuals and species, a popular distortion of Darwin's notion of "survival of the fittest," dissolves before a new view of continual cooperation, strong interaction, and mutual dependence among life forms. Life did not take over the globe by combat, but by networkiing. Life forms multiplied and complexified by co-opting others, not just by killing them.”
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
~28 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Lynn Margulis (born Lynn Petra Alexander; March 5, 1938 – November 22, 2011) was an American evolutionary biologist, who was the primary modern proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution. In particular, Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed biologists' understanding of the evolution of the Eukaryotes, organisms with nuclei in their cells. She proposed that they came into being by symbiotic mergers of bacteria. Margulis was the co-developer of the Gaia hypothesis with the British chemist James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions as a unified self-regulating system, and the principal defender and promulgator of the five kingdom classification of Robert Whittaker.
Throughout her career, Margulis' work could arouse intense objections, and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells", appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals. 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.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Lynn Margulis” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.