William Martin (born February 16, 1957 in

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland. It is located just northwest of Washington, D.C. It takes its name from a local church, the Bethesda Meeting House (1820, rebuilt 1849), which ...

) is an American botanist and microbiologist, currently Head of the Institut für Molekulare Evolution, Heinrich Heine Universität,

Düsseldorf Düsseldorf ( , , ; often in English sources; Low Franconian and Ripuarian: ''Düsseldörp'' ; archaic nl, Dusseldorp ) is the capital city of North Rhine-Westphalia, the most populous state of Germany. It is the second-largest city in ...

. Born in

, Martin was educated at Richland College, Dallas, Texas, and

Texas A&M University Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public university, public, Land-grant university, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M Unive ...

. After working as a

carpenter Carpentry is a skilled trade and a craft in which the primary work performed is the cutting, shaping and installation of building materials during the construction of buildings, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. Carpenters t ...

in Dallas, Martin moved to

Hannover Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the 13th-largest city in Germany as well as the fourth-largest city in Northern Germany ...

, Germany, and obtained his university Diploma from Technische Universität Hannover in 1985. Martin's PhD is from Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung, Cologne, where he did

postdoctoral research A postdoctoral fellow, postdoctoral researcher, or simply postdoc, is a person professionally conducting research after the completion of their doctoral studies (typically a PhD). The ultimate goal of a postdoctoral research position is to pu ...

, followed by further postdoctoral work at Institut für Genetik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, where he obtained his

Habilitation Habilitation is the highest university degree, or the procedure by which it is achieved, in many European countries. The candidate fulfills a university's set criteria of excellence in research, teaching and further education, usually including ...

in 1992. In 1999, Martin became full (C4) professor at Universität Düsseldorf. Martin is a distinguished and sometimes controversial contributor to the field of

molecular evolution Molecular evolution is the process of change in the sequence composition of cellular molecules such as DNA, RNA, and proteins across generations. The field of molecular evolution uses principles of evolutionary biology and population genet ...

and the

origin of life In biology, abiogenesis (from a- 'not' + Greek bios 'life' + genesis 'origin') or the origin of life is the natural process by which life has arisen from non-living matter, such as simple organic compounds. The prevailing scientific hypothes ...

. He is known particularly for his work on the evolution of the

Calvin cycle The Calvin cycle, light-independent reactions, bio synthetic phase, dark reactions, or photosynthetic carbon reduction (PCR) cycle of photosynthesis is a series of chemical reactions that convert carbon dioxide and hydrogen-carrier compounds into ...

and plastids including

chloroplasts A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant and algal cells. The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, and stores it in ...

, and, more generally, for contributions to understanding the origin and evolution of

eukaryotic cells Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bact ...

. Martin is co-author, with Miklos Mueller of

Rockefeller University The Rockefeller University is a private biomedical research and graduate-only university in New York City, New York. It focuses primarily on the biological and medical sciences and provides doctoral and postdoctoral education. It is classif ...

, of the 1998 paper ''The

Hydrogen hypothesis The hydrogen hypothesis is a model proposed by William F. Martin and Miklós Müller in 1998 that describes a possible way in which the mitochondrion arose as an endosymbiont within a prokaryotic host in the archaea, giving rise to a symbiotic asso ...

for the first

eukaryote Eukaryotes () are organisms whose cells have a nucleus. All animals, plants, fungi, and many unicellular organisms, are Eukaryotes. They belong to the group of organisms Eukaryota or Eukarya, which is one of the three domains of life. Bacter ...

''. A wealth of subsequent research papers include contributions, independently and with Michael J. Russell of the

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center in the City of La Cañada Flintridge, California, United States. Founded in the 1930s by Caltech researchers, JPL is owned by NASA an ...

, to understanding the geochemical origins of cells and their biochemical pathways. Martin's work is well cited (nearly 30,000 times) and he has an h-index of 95.

Awards

* 1990:

Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis The Heinz Maier-Leibnitz-Preis (Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize), in honor and memory of the German physicist Heinz Maier-Leibnitz, is funded by the ''Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung'' (BMBF, German Ministry of Education and Research), and ...

of the

Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft The German Research Foundation (german: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft ; DFG ) is a German research funding organization, which functions as a self-governing institution for the promotion of science and research in the Federal Republic of Germ ...

* 1997: Technology Transfer Prize, Industrie und Handelskammer Braunschweig * 1998
Miescher-Ishida Prize
of th
International Society of Endocytobiology
*2017: Spiridion Brusina Medal of the Croatian Society of Natural Sciences. * 2018: Preis de

Honours

* 2000-2007 Foreign Associate, CIAR Programme in Evolutionary Biology * 2001- Faculty 1000 Member for Plant Genomes and Evolution * 2006- Elected Fellow, American Academy for Microbiology * 2006-2009 Julius von Haast Fellow of the New Zealand Ministry for Research, Science and Technology * 2008 Elected Member of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften

Selected publications

* * * * * * Madeline C. Weiss, Filipa L. Sousa, Natalia Mrnjavac, Sinje Neukirchen, Mayo Roettger, Shijulal Nelson-Sathi & William F. Martin: The physiology and habitat of the last universal common ancestor, Nature Microbiology (2016)

References

External links

Molecular Evolution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Martin, William F. Evolutionary biologists Protistologists Texas A&M University alumni Technical University of Braunschweig alumni University of Hanover alumni People from Bethesda, Maryland 1957 births Living people 21st-century American biologists Richland College alumni