Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel by Dorion Sagan (Author). Tireless, controversial, and massively inspirational to those who knew her or encountered her work, Lynn Margulis was a scientist whose mental power and pursuits knew no bounds. Finest known for her work on the origins of eukaryotic cells, the Gaia speculation, and symbiogenesis as a driving force in evolution, her work has endlessly changed the way in which we understand life on Earth.
When Margulis handed away in 2011, she left behind a groundbreaking scientific legacy that spanned decades. In this assortment, Dorion Sagan, Margulis’s son and longtime collaborator, gathers together the voices of buddies and colleagues to remark on her life and legacy, in essays that cover her early collaboration with James Lovelock, her fearless face-off with Richard Dawkins through the so-known as “Battle of Balliol” at Oxford, the intrepid application of her scientific mind to the insistence that 9-11 was a false-flag operation, her affinity for Emily Dickinson, and more.
Margulis was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, acquired the celebrated National Medal of Science in 1999, and her papers are permanently archived at the Library of Congress. Lower than a month before her untimely loss of life, Margulis was named one of many twenty most influential scientists alive – one in every of only two women on this list, which embrace such scientists as Stephen Hawking, James Watson, and Jane Goodall.
Having suffered ridicule and marginalization for her finally vindicated theory of symbiogenesis early in her profession, Lynn Margulis was ever prepared to assist these swimming upstream against intellectual conformity. She became a champion of underdogs, apparently crazy geniuses, and intellectually bold however socially timid researchers. She was keen to defend theses that will or may not be appropriate because she believed in science and the need of hearing, weighing and properly evaluating concepts earlier than tabling, rejecting or accepting them. Several of the essays collected listed here are written by these–in numerous disciplines, not simply science–whom she took underneath wing and encouraged. Her instance throws mild on the shame of scientific observe right this moment, with its crippling institutionalization and funding rituals. Margulis is remembered on this volume for her proof-based seek for reality, her sturdy opinions, and her generosity. Humorous, informative, and numerous, these essays collectively describe how actual science and actual learning actually get done. Highly recommended.
What is so exceptional about Margulis is that, as a 29-12 months old biologist, she took on the institution in her discipline by selling a radical and basic speculation, at the same time as she rigorously gave credits to earlier publications of others who foreshadowed her ideas. This mixture of scrupulous scholarship and mental daring could be very admirable and rare. This guide is a nicely-deserved tribute to someone who embodied scientific virtue.
Lynn Margulis: The Life and Legacy of a Scientific Rebel
Dorion Sagan (Author)
224 pages
Chelsea Green Publishing; 1 edition (October 22, 2012)
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