Giant Woman in Science Lynn Margulis, RIP
My friend Phoebe Lostroh at Colorado College sent me a copy of a letter from the man that she hand picked to succeed her in teaching her Symbiosis course. He was convincing about her unique status, interestingly didn't qualify it as "unique woman scientist" but in general. I agree,
Laura
I'm so encouraged that many of us knew about Lynn Margulis. And Donna, Helen H, and Adam, it's great to hear her effects on your thinking and your memories of her. She and her theory were totally trashed early on, but it sure bounced back strongly as evidence accumulated.
best,
Laura
I'm not an evolutionary biologist but I lean strongly in that direction. Perhaps the first real paper I read on the subject was one of her early contributions on symbiosis that I encountered in college. I remember how totally cool I thought it was and was never aware of the controversy it aroused. Though machismo certainly permeates much of science, evolutionary biology may be more saturated with it than most. Lynn Margulis had guts aplenty to go along with that genesis mind.
BTW: She published a paper that made a strong statement regarding the sterility of Mars that I'm sure made her ex's head spin. Took guts to do that too.
Thank you, Laura, for posting about Lynn and thank you, Donna Simmons, for the link to the article about her, by one of my UCSB woman colleagues! I was lucky to hear her speak at a Gaia conference in VA about 5 yrs ago, and to speak with her. I feel my mortality - I planned to send her my origin-of-life hypothesis, but that won't happen now; and some day I, too, will be gone. I first heard about her organelle hypothesis in about 1973.
This is my favorite recent link about her:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2011/11/24/r-i-p-lynn-margulis-biological-rebel/
Sad news, indeed, but I'm glad you posted it Laura...
I agree with the comments about lack of credit for women scientists' discoveries. And the list goes on, in many other fields of endeavor!
I just read a rather long post from an interview with Margulis in 2009 titled "Intimacy of Strangers and Natural Selection": http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL200903/S00194.htm
I found it quite fascinating and thought it gave a nice impression of the vibrant personality of the woman herself. Incidentally, it was written by a woman journalist. I regret that I never met Lynn Margulis in person.
Not crediting a woman with discovering an important theoretical advance is a long-standing strategy by scientists who would like to get the credit for that finding themselves. I can trace it back at least to the credit grab by TH Morgan of the data of his friend Nettie Stevens and also of his colleague EB Wilson, eventually in his famous genetics book eliding their contributions so he usurped credit for discovery of sex chromosomes when in fact, he fought for ten years against the concept in spite of Stevens' strong data!
cheers,
Laura
Hi Laura,
My evolutionary biology prof didn't mention her, but I ran across information about her in an article I read and found out lots more. She was terribly important in how we understand complex cells' origin. It's terrible (I almost said criminal) that later scientists (men!) don't credit her with the courage to propose this theory before it was popular.
REL
