03 - Young Scientists Summer Program Lecture - 10 August 2006

Lynn Margulis

Slanted Truths and Life's Evolution: The Scientific Search
for Truth Even if We Don't Like What We Find

Listen [MP3 1:23:50]

Lecture Summary

Professor Lynn Margulis makes a powerful introduction to her theory of symbiogenesis, which challenges a central tenet of neodarwinism.

With the aid of poetry, music, and video, she argues for a revolution in evolution. She makes the case that inherited variation, significant in evolution, does not come mainly from random mutations. Rather new tissues, organs, and even new species evolve primarily through the long-lasting intimacy of strangers. The fusion of genomes in symbiosis followed by natural selection, she suggests, leads to increasingly complex levels of individuality.

She maintains that bacteria are the underlying cause of change and that more research is needed into the bacterial world. And this includes humans; after all, bacteria accounts for 10 percent of the dry weight of each person.

Speaker Biography

Lynn Margulis, best known for her theory of symbiogenesis, is Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Geosciences
at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her publications span a wide range of scientific topics and include original contributions to cell biology and microbial evolution.

She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983 and received from William J. Clinton the Presidential Medal of Science in 1999. The Library of Congress, Washington DC, announced in 1998 that it would permanently archive her papers. She graduated in Liberal Arts from the University of Chicago, earned her MS from the University of Wisconsin, and gained her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley.

More about Lynn Margulis

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Last updated: 03 Apr 2009