A List 4/8/02 SLU'S ROMER LECTURE CENTERS ON NEW VIEW OF EVOLUTION CANTON - Evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis will give the 2002 Alfred Romer Lecture at St. Lawrence University, on "The Inheritance of Acquired Bacteria." The lecture will be on Friday, April 19, at 8 p.m. in the Hepburn Auditorium, and is open to the public, free of charge. Some 140 years after the publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, a major issue remains unresolved: how do great evolutionary changes occur, how do new species appear and what leads to new taxonomic groups? Margulis believes that symbiogenesis, "an evolutionary consequence of symbiosis," is a principal factor. In her lecture, she will discuss the old problem of the origin of evolutionary change and show how genome acquisition and community analysis propel us toward a new, Gaian view of life as a planetary phenomenon, and Gaia may be understood as symbiosis as seen from space. Margulis' writings span a wide spectrum of scientific topics, ranging from professional publications to children's literature. She is Distinguished University Professor in the geosciences department at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst; prior to that she was a faculty member in the biology department at Boston University for 20 years. She has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including eight honorary doctorates, here and abroad, a NASA Public Service award (1981), the National Medal of Science (1999), Sigma Xi's distinguished Proctor Prize (1999), and the Massachusetts Cultural Council's 2001 Commonwealth Award of "Interpretive Scientist" for science communication and education. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the World Academy of Art and Science, the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her work has centered around gathering evidence to support the theory that symbiogenesis is responsible for great evolutionary changes, and that microscopic organelles within cells were originally separate entities which were then incorporated into a symbiotic relationship; the relationship is maintained as the organisms reproduce. This modern serial endosymbiosis theory (SET) was proposed by Margulis nearly 30 years ago and is now widely accepted as the origin of plastids (from cyanobacteria) and mitochondria (from respiring bacteria). Her work continues to focus on the origin of other subcellular bodies. The Romer Lecture was established to honor Physics Professor Emeritus Alfred Romer, who had been associated with St. Lawrence for over 50 years.-30- Back To News Releases Back to St. Lawrence Homepage