Carl Woese

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Carl Woese bigraphy, stories - American microbiologist

Carl Woese : biography

July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012

Carl Richard Woese ( July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist. Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain or kingdom of life) in 1977 by phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA, a technique pioneered by Woese which revolutionized the discipline of microbiology. He was also the originator of the RNA world hypothesis in 1977, although not by that name. He held the Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and was professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.

Honors and scientific legacy

Woese was a MacArthur Fellow in 1984, was made a member of the National Academy of Sciences in 1988, received the Leeuwenhoek Medal (microbiology’s highest honor) in 1992, the Selman A. Waksman Award in Microbiology in 1995 from the National Academy of Sciences, and was a National Medal of Science recipient in 2000. In 2003, he received the Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for his discovery of a third domain of life". In 2006, he was made a foreign member of the Royal Society.

Many microbial species, such as Pyrococcus woesei, Methanobrevibacter woesei, and Conexibacter woesei, are named in his honor.

Microbiologist Justin Sonnenburg of Stanford University said "The 1977 paper is one of the most influential in microbiology and arguably, all of biology. It ranks with the works of Watson and Crick and Darwin, providing an evolutionary framework for the incredible diversity of the microbial world".

With regard to Woese’s work on horizontal gene transfer as a primary evolutionary process, Professor Norman Pace of the University of Colorado at Boulder said, "I think Woese has done more for biology writ large than any biologist in history, including Darwin…. There’s a lot more to learn, and he’s been interpreting the emerging story brilliantly".Mark Buchanan, , New Scientist, January 26, 2010

Perspectives on Biology

Woese shared his thoughts on the past, present, and future of biology in Current Biology:

The "important questions" that 21st century biology faces all stem from a single question, the nature and generation of biological organization. . . . Yes, Darwin is back, but in the company of . . . scientists who can see much further into the depths of biology than was possible heretofore. It is no longer a "10,000 species of birds" view of evolution—evolution seen as a procession of forms. The concern is now with the process of evolution itself.

I see the question of biological organization taking two prominent directions today. The first is the evolution of (proteinaceous) cellular organization, which includes sub-questions such as the evolution of the translation apparatus and the genetic code, and the origin and nature of the hierarchies of control that fine-tune and precisely interrelate the panoply of cellular processes that constitute cells. It also includes the question of the number of different basic cell types that exist on earth today: did all modern cells come from a single ancestral cellular organization?

The second major direction involves the nature of the global ecosystem. . . . Bacteria are the major organisms on this planet—in numbers, in total mass, in importance to the global balances. Thus, it is microbial ecology that . . . is most in need of development, both in terms of facts needed to understand it, and in terms of the framework in which to interpret them.

Woese considered biology to have an "all-important" role in society. In his view, biology should serve a broader purpose than the pursuit of "an engineered environment":

What was formally recognized in physics needs now to be recognized in biology: science serves a dual function. On the one hand it is society’s servant, attacking the applied problems posed by society. On the other hand, it functions as society’s teacher, helping the latter to understand its world and itself. It is the latter function that is effectively missing today.