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 in ...
) 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 th ...
.
Born 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 in ...
, Martin was educated at
Richland College
Dallas College Richland Campus (often stylized as Richland or RLC) is a public community college in Dallas, Texas. The school was founded in 1972 and is part of Dallas College. It is the largest campus in the college, featuring about 20,000 st ...
, Dallas, Texas, and
Texas A&M University
Texas A&M University (Texas A&M, A&M, or TAMU) is a public, land-grant, research university in College Station, Texas. It was founded in 1876 and became the flagship institution of the Texas A&M University System in 1948. As of late 2021, T ...
. 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, Shipbuilding, ships, timber bridges, concrete formwork, etc. ...
in Dallas, Martin moved to
Hannover
Hanover (; german: Hannover ; nds, Hannober) is the capital and largest city of the German States of Germany, state of Lower Saxony. Its 535,932 (2021) inhabitants make it the List of cities in Germany by population, 13th-largest city in Germa ...
, Germany, and obtained his university Diploma from
Technische Universität Hannover in 1985. Martin's PhD is from
Max-Planck-Institut
The Max Planck Society for the Advancement of Science (german: Max-Planck-Gesellschaft zur Förderung der Wissenschaften e. V.; abbreviated MPG) is a formally independent non-governmental and non-profit association of German research institutes. ...
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 p ...
, followed by further postdoctoral work at Institut für Genetik,
Technische Universität Braunschweig
The Technische Universität Braunschweig (unofficially University of Braunschweig – Institute of Technology), commonly referred to as TU Braunschweig, is the oldest ' (comparable to an institute of technology in the American system) in Germany. ...
, 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 a ...
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 genetics ...
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
The plastid (Greek: πλαστός; plastós: formed, molded – plural plastids) is a membrane-bound organelle found in the cells of plants, algae, and some other eukaryotic organisms. They are considered to be intracellular endosymbiotic cyanobac ...
including
chloroplasts
A chloroplast () is a type of membrane-bound organelle known as a plastid that conducts photosynthesis mostly in plant cell, plant and algae, algal cells. The photosynthetic pigment chlorophyll captures the energy from sunlight, converts it, ...
, and, more generally, for contributions to understanding the origin and evolution of
eukaryotic cells
Eukaryotes () are organisms whose Cell (biology), cells have a cell nucleus, 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 ...
. 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. Bacte ...
''. 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 Prizeof 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