1938-

American Geneticist

American geneticist Lynn Margulis is noted for her investigations of the intricate, fundamental systems by which life creates and maintains itself on Earth. She is often regarded as the co-creator, with James Lovelock (1919- ), of the Gaia hypothesis, an idea suggesting that the earth is an ecosystem, or the sum of many ecosystems.

Margulis was born in Chicago in 1938, the eldest of four daughters. At age 14 she enrolled in an undergraduate program at the University of Chicago, where she was introduced to the natural sciences. After graduating, she pursued an M.S. in zoology and genetics at the University of Wisconsin. In 1965 she received her Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California at Berkeley. In 1970 she moved to Massachusetts, where over the next 22 years she raised four children and taught at Boston University. She now teaches at the University of Massachusetts...