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Carl Woese

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A microbiologist (from Greek μῑκρος ) is a scientist who studies microscopic life forms and processes. This includes study of the growth, interactions and characteristics of microscopic organisms such as bacteria , algae , fungi , and some types of parasites and their vectors. Most microbiologists work in offices and/or research facilities, both in private biotechnology companies and in academia . Most microbiologists specialize in a given topic within microbiology such as bacteriology , parasitology , virology , or immunology .

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68-515: Carl Richard Woese ( / ˈ w oʊ z / ; July 15, 1928 – December 30, 2012) was an American microbiologist and biophysicist . Woese is famous for defining the Archaea (a new domain of life) in 1977 through a pioneering phylogenetic taxonomy of 16S ribosomal RNA , a technique that has revolutionized microbiology. He also originated the RNA world hypothesis in 1967, although not by that name. Woese held

136-648: A PhD in biophysics at Yale University , where his doctoral research focused on the inactivation of viruses by heat and ionizing radiation . He studied medicine at the University of Rochester for two years. Then he became a postdoctoral researcher in biophysics at Yale University investigating bacterial spores. From 1960 to 1963, he worked as a biophysicist at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, New York . In 1964, Woese joined

204-409: 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

272-399: A class on medieval Islam, nor can an art historian run an organic chemistry lab. Moreover, there is no way that the employing institution can provide the kind of retraining that would facilitate such a transformation... even the largest and most well-endowed institution lacks the resources to reevaluate and replace its medieval Islamicists and algebraic topologists every year. Tenure thus lets

340-790: A clinical/Medical Microbiologist in a hospital or medical research centre generally require a Masters in Microbiology along with PhD in any of the life-sciences ( Biochem , Micro, Biotech, Genetics, etc) as well as several years experience as a microbiologist. This often includes time spent as a postdoctoral researcher wherein one leads research projects and prepares to transition to an independent career. Postdoctoral researchers are often evaluated largely based on their record of published academic papers , as well as recommendations from their supervisors and colleagues. In certain sub-fields of microbiology, licenses or certifications are available or required in order to qualify for certain positions. This

408-406: A level of complexity and connectedness that made genes from other organisms much less able to displace an individual's own genes. In later years, Woese's work concentrated on genomic analysis to elucidate the significance of horizontal gene transfer (HGT) for evolution. He worked on detailed analyses of the phylogenies of the aminoacyl-tRNA synthetases and on the effect of horizontal gene transfer on

476-429: A lot more to learn, and he's been interpreting the emerging story brilliantly". Microbiologist Microbiologists generally work in some way to increase scientific knowledge or to utilise that knowledge in a way that improves outcomes in medicine or some industry. For many microbiologists, this work includes planning and conducting experimental research projects in some kind of laboratory setting. Others may have

544-541: A more administrative role, supervising scientists and evaluating their results. Microbiologists working in the medical field, such as clinical microbiologists , may see patients or patient samples and do various tests to detect disease-causing organisms . For microbiologists working in academia, duties include performing research in an academic laboratory, writing grant proposals to fund research, as well as some amount of teaching and designing courses. Microbiologists in industry roles may have similar duties except research

612-490: A news article printed in the journal Science . The growing body of supporting data led the scientific community to accept the Archaea by the mid-1980s. Today, few scientists cling to the idea of a unified Prokarya. Woese's work on Archaea is also significant in its implications for the search for life on other planets. Before the discovery by Woese and Fox, scientists thought that Archaea were extreme organisms that evolved from

680-426: A pay increase may be required to compensate faculty members for the lost job security. Some U.S. states have considered legislation to remove tenure at public universities. A further criticism of tenure is that it rewards complacency. Once professors are awarded tenure, they may begin putting reduced effort into their job, knowing that their removal is difficult or expensive to the institution. Another criticism

748-412: A problem but fail to see how abolishing tenure would help. As things stand, some heterodox scholars do get hired and tenured.. If only the heterodox need formal protection, and we have a problem with growing orthodoxy, then eliminating the formal protection will exacerbate the problem." Skoble argues categorically and plainly against critics that say "tenure protects incompetent professors": "My argument

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816-446: A relatively late age, as on average one becomes an Academic Assistant at the age of 42. In 2002 the "Juniorprofessur" position (comparable to an assistant professor in the US, but not always endowed with a tenure track) was introduced as an alternative to "Habilitation". However, the degree of formal equivalence between a "Habilitation" and a successfully completed "Juniorprofessur" varies across

884-516: A series of attendant rights and benefits, yet this status is subject to discussion. In the W pay scale the professorial pay is related to performance rather than merely to age, as it was in C. Under the tenure systems adopted by many universities and colleges in the United States and Canada, some faculty positions have tenure and some do not. Typical systems (such as the widely adopted "1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure" of

952-518: 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

1020-456: A son and daughter. Woese turned his attention to the genetic code while setting up his lab at General Electric 's Knolls Laboratory in the fall of 1960. Interest among physicists and molecular biologists had begun to coalesce around deciphering the correspondence between the twenty amino acids and the four letter alphabet of nucleic acid bases in the decade following James D. Watson , Francis Crick , and Rosalind Franklin 's discovery of

1088-628: Is effectively missing today. 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

1156-445: Is essential in teaching and research in this regard. In the United States, tenure rights for teachers serving in (K-12) public schools also have been in existence for more than a hundred years. Defenders of tenure, like Ellen Schrecker and Aeon J. Skoble, generally acknowledge flaws in how tenure approvals are currently run and problems in how tenured professors might use their time, security, and power; however, as Skoble puts it,

1224-510: 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 R. 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

1292-467: Is performed in industrial labs in order to develop or improve commercial products and processes. Industry jobs may also not include some degree of sales and marketing work, as well as regulatory compliance duties. Microbiologists working in government may have a variety of duties, including laboratory research, writing and advising, developing and reviewing regulatory processes, and overseeing grants offered to outside institutions. Some microbiologists work in

1360-400: Is that it may cause the institution to tolerate incompetent professors if they are tenured. Gilbert Lycan, a history professor at Stetson University , writing in respect of a fellow professor he deemed unacceptable, stated that "the dean ... would not tolerate ineffective teaching by a non-tenured teacher who was making no effort to improve," thereby tacitly admitting, or at least leaving open

1428-468: Is that the more I am persuaded that there is groupthink orthodoxy afoot, the more I want assurances that I would not get fired if I write an essay on free trade or the Second Amendment or a book on anarchism. I take it the counterargument is that the more entrenched the orthodoxy becomes, the less likely a heterodox scholar will be tenured, or even hired, in the first place... I can see that this poses

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1496-519: Is that when this happens, it is a malfunction of the system, not an intrinsic feature of its proper use. The way it is supposed to work is that incompetent professors do not get tenure in the first place. The rebuttal is 'but they do, therefore tenure is a bad idea.' But that is like arguing that because you ran a red light and caused a train wreck, driving is a bad idea." Some have argued that modern tenure systems diminish academic freedom, forcing those seeking tenured positions to profess conformance to

1564-446: 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

1632-469: Is true for clinical microbiologists, as well as those involved in food safety and some aspects of pharmaceutical/medical device development. Microbiologists are expected to be needed to help pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies develop new drugs that are produced with the aid of microorganisms. In addition, demand for biofuels production is expected to increase the need for microbiologists to conduct advanced research and development in these areas. In

1700-528: The American Association of University Professors ) allow only a limited period to establish a record of published research, ability to attract grant funding, academic visibility , teaching excellence, and administrative or community service. They limit the number of years that any employee can remain employed as a non-tenured instructor or professor, compelling the institution to grant tenure to or terminate an individual, with significant advance notice, at

1768-677: The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences "for his discovery of a third domain of life". He was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 2004. 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

1836-816: The Stanley O. Ikenberry Chair and was professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign . Woese was born in Syracuse, New York on July 15, 1928. His family was German American . Woese attended Deerfield Academy in Massachusetts . He received a bachelor's degree in mathematics and physics from Amherst College in 1950. During his time at Amherst, Woese took only one biology course ( Biochemistry , in his senior year) and had "no scientific interest in plants and animals" until advised by William M. Fairbank , then an assistant professor of physics at Amherst, to pursue biophysics at Yale . In 1953, he completed

1904-475: The United States in the early 20th century, and several other countries have since adopted it. Tenure is a means of defending the principle of academic freedom , which holds that it benefits society in the long run if academics are free to hold and espouse a variety of views, even if the views are unpopular or controversial. Tenure was introduced into American universities in the early 1900s in part to prevent

1972-617: The United States , the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicts that employment of microbiologists will grow 5 percent from 2022 (20,900 employed) to 2032 (22,000 employed). This represents slower growth than the average occupation, as well as slower growth than life scientists as a whole (7 percent projected). Tenure Tenure is a type of academic appointment that protects its holder from being fired or laid off except for cause , or under extraordinary circumstances such as financial exigency or program discontinuation. Academic tenure originated in

2040-468: The University of Illinois after hearing his research goals; at this visit Spiegelman offered Woese a position with immediate tenure beginning in the fall of 1964. With the freedom to patiently pursue more speculative threads of inquiry outside the mainstream of biological research, Woese began to consider the genetic code in evolutionary terms, asking how the codon assignments and their translation into an amino acid sequence might have evolved. For much of

2108-482: The "downsides are either not as bad as claimed, or [are] costs outweighed by the benefits"—and he points out that the very debate about tenure in which he is engaging is made possible by the academic freedom which tenure makes possible. "Tenure remains scholars' best defense of free inquiry and heterodoxy," writes Skoble, "especially in these times of heightened polarization and internet outrage. Let us focus on fixing it, not scrapping it." Supporters of tenure argue that

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2176-433: The "social justice" element of Schrecker's defense makes it seem like present-day assurances of academic freedom create a politically left echo chamber in academic departments, Skoble observes that tenure thus becomes all the more necessary to preserve a diversity of ideas: "There is an orthodoxy in the academy, a well-documented leftward slant in political affiliation. To Bruce, this is an argument against tenure, but my point

2244-511: The 1970s and 1980s and are often no longer refilled after a retirement. In order to attain the position of professor, in some fields, an academic must usually complete a " Habilitation " (a kind of broader second PhD thesis; the very highest degree available within the university, entitling the holder to be a "full professor"), after which they are eligible for tenureship. This means that, compared to other countries, academics in Germany obtain tenure at

2312-463: The 20th century, prokaryotes were regarded as a single group of organisms and classified based on their biochemistry , morphology and metabolism . In a highly influential 1962 paper, Roger Stanier and C. B. van Niel first established the division of cellular organization into prokaryotes and eukaryotes , defining prokaryotes as those organisms lacking a cell nucleus . Adapted from Édouard Chatton 's generalization, Stanier and Van Niel's concept

2380-561: The AAUP and the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the 1940 Statement is endorsed by over 250 scholarly and higher education organizations and is widely adopted into faculty handbooks and collective bargaining agreements at institutions of higher education throughout the United States. This statement holds that, "The common good depends upon the free search for truth and its free exposition" and stresses that academic freedom

2448-648: The Third Reich. Adolf Hitler called universal education "the most corroding and disintegrating poison". He appointed Education Minister Bernard Rust , to ensure Nazi racial theories were integrated in university curriculums. This caused a purge of 1500 professors, and by 1939, nearly half of all faculty posts were occupied by Nazis. In the late 1940s, the University of Illinois at Urbana fired several prominent economists for teaching Keynesian economics . Danish universities in advertisements for faculty positions usually state that professor positions are tenured. However,

2516-408: The academic community avoid excessive turnover while still ensuring the quality of the institution's faculty. It is structured around two assessments – one at hiring, the other some six years later – that are far more rigorous than those elsewhere in society and give the institution enough confidence in the ability of the successful candidates to retain them on a permanent basis." Tenure also locks in

2584-603: The arbitrary dismissal of faculty members who expressed unpopular views. One notable instance was the case of the resignation of Brown University president Elisha Andrews , who advocated silver coinage to reduce the impact on Americans and farmers who owed larger and larger loans due to deflation . The board of Brown University, many of whom were creditors and landowners (positions that benefited from deflation), told Andrews to cease his public advocacy. The Dean of Yale Law School , Francis Wayland , argued that Andrew's free expression threatened donations to Brown, and that money

2652-644: The basic structure of the tree of life . Woese and Fox discovered a kind of microbial life which they called the “archaebacteria” ( Archaea ). They reported that the archaebacteria comprised "a third kingdom" of life as distinct from bacteria as plants and animals. Having defined Archaea as a new "urkingdom" (later domain ) which were neither bacteria nor eukaryotes, Woese redrew the taxonomic tree. His three-domain system , based on phylogenetic relationships rather than obvious morphological similarities, divided life into 23 main divisions, incorporated within three domains: Bacteria , Archaea , and Eucarya . Acceptance of

2720-427: The different states ( Bundesländer ), and the informal recognition of having served as a "Juniorprofessur" as a replacement for the "Habilitation" in the appointment procedures for professorships varies greatly between disciplines. Due to a university system that guarantees universities relative academic freedom, the position of professor in Germany is relatively strong and independent. As civil servants, professors have

2788-824: The dismissal had not followed the collective agreements and Thybo received an economic compensation. Thybo had insisted that he should be reinstated in his previous position, but this was not supported by the court and the university did not rehire him. The original form of academic tenure was removed in the United Kingdom in 1988 through the Education Reform Act . In its place, there is the distinction between permanent and temporary contracts for academics. A permanent lecturer in UK universities usually holds an open-ended position that covers teaching, research and administrative responsibilities. Academics are divided into two classes: On

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2856-462: The distribution of those key enzymes among organisms. The goal of the research was to explain how the primary cell types (the archaeal, eubacterial, and eukaryotic) evolved from an ancestral state in the RNA world . 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,

2924-448: The end of a specified time period. Some institutions require promotion to associate professor as a condition of tenure. A university may also offer research positions or professional track and clinical track academic positions which are said to be "non-tenure track". Positions with titles such as instructor, lecturer, adjunct professor, research professor etc. do not carry the possibility of tenure, have higher teaching loads (other than maybe

2992-536: The field of patent law , either with national patent offices or private law practices. Her duties include research and navigation of intellectual property regulations. Clinical microbiologists tend to work in government or hospital laboratories where their duties include analyzing clinical specimens to detect microorganisms responsible for the disease. Some microbiologists instead work in the field of science outreach , where they develop programs and materials to educate students and non-scientists and encourage interest in

3060-509: The field of microbiology for the younger generation . Entry-level microbiology jobs generally require at least a bachelor's degree in microbiology or a related field. These degree programs frequently include courses in chemistry , physics , statistics , biochemistry , and genetics , followed by more specialized courses in sub-fields of interest. Many of these courses have laboratory components to teach trainees basic and specialized laboratory skills. Higher-level and independent jobs like

3128-682: The highest professional standards while also trying to contribute in some way to the cause of freedom and social justice, I am viewed as a controversial figure in some circles. I would be seriously hampered in my work, however, if I was constantly worrying about losing my job because of something I wrote or said... Tenure is also the mechanism through which institutions create a protected space within which college and university teachers can exercise their craft without worrying that an unpopular or unorthodox undertaking might put their careers at risk. More concretely, it creates an economically secure cohort of senior faculty members who can (and sometimes do) defend

3196-407: The history of life. Woese wrote, "My evolutionary concerns center on the bacteria and the archaea, whose evolutions cover most of the planet's 4.5-billion-year history. Using ribosomal RNA sequence as an evolutionary measure, my laboratory has reconstructed the phylogeny of both groups, and thereby provided a phylogenetically valid system of classification for prokaryotes. The discovery of the archaea

3264-618: The interpretation of tenure at Danish universities has been a matter of controversy. Denmark adopted a more hierarchical management approach for universities in the early 2000s. This new system was introduced by parliament on proposal by the Minister of Science, Technology and Development, Helge Sander , based on his vision that Danish universities in the future should compete about funding in order to increase their attention to marketing and industry. The controversial understanding of tenure in Denmark

3332-445: The kinds of financial remuneration that similarly educated individuals in other fields expect." Furthermore, Schrecker continues, because research positions require extreme specialization, they must consolidate the frequency and intensity of performance evaluations across a given career, and they cannot have the same flexibility or turnover rates as other jobs, making the tenure process a practical necessity: "A mathematician cannot teach

3400-413: The level of mediocrity as those awarding the tenured professorships. For example, according to physicist Lee Smolin , "...it is practically career suicide for a young theoretical physicist not to join the field of string theory ." Economist Steven Levitt , who recommends the elimination of tenure (for economics professors) in order to incentivize higher performance among professors, also points out that

3468-610: The mechanistic basis of protein translation, but in Woese's view, largely overlooked the genetic code's evolutionary origins as an afterthought. In 1962, Woese spent several months as a visiting researcher at the Pasteur Institute in Paris , a locus of intense activity on the molecular biology of gene expression and gene regulation. While in Paris, he met Sol Spiegelman , who invited Woese to visit

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3536-521: The microbiology faculty of the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign, where he focused on Archaea, genomics, and molecular evolution as his areas of expertise. He became a professor at the University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign's Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology , which was renamed in his honor in 2015, after his death. Woese died on December 30, 2012, following complications from pancreatic cancer , leaving as survivors his wife Gabriella and

3604-469: The microorganisms more familiar to us. Now, most believe they are ancient, and may have robust evolutionary connections to the first organisms on Earth. Organisms similar to those archaea that exist in extreme environments may have developed on other planets, some of which harbor conditions conducive to extremophile life. Notably, Woese's elucidation of the tree of life shows the overwhelming diversity of microbial lineages: single-celled organisms represent

3672-459: 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

3740-622: The non-pecuniary aspects of academic compensation, lowering the required salary. Above all, however, tenure is essential because it protects academic freedom: not only in cases in which a scholar's politics may run counter to those of their department, institution, or funding bodies, but also and most often in cases when a scholar's work innovates in ways that challenge received wisdom in the field. As much as Ellen Schrecker identifies its flaws, she asserts tenure's crucial role in preserving academic freedom: And yet, despite its whittling away by such unfortunate decisions as Urofsky, Garcetti, and Hong,

3808-707: The one hand, professors (W2/W3&C3/C4 positions in the new and old systems of pay grades) are employed as state civil servants and hold tenure as highly safeguarded lifetime employment; On the other hand, there is a much larger group of "junior staff" on fixed-term contracts, research grants, fellowships and part-time jobs. In 2010, 9% of academic staff were professors, 66% were "junior staff" (including doctoral candidates on contracts), and 25% were other academic staff in secondary employment. Permanent research, teaching and management positions below professorship as an "Akademischer Rat" (a civil service position salaried like high school teachers) have become relatively rare compared to

3876-726: The quality of American education as well as the ability of their colleagues to teach, do research, and speak out as citizens without fear of institutional reprisals. Such, at least, is the idealized version of the relationship between tenure and academic freedom. In elementary and secondary schools, tenure also protects teachers from being fired for personal, political, or other non-work related reasons: tenure prohibits school districts from firing experienced teachers to hire less experienced, less expensive teachers as well as protects teachers from being fired for teaching unpopular, controversial, or otherwise challenged curricula such as evolutionary biology, theology, and controversial literature. If

3944-483: The research positions), have less influence within the institution, lower compensation with few or no benefits (see adjunct professor ), and little protection of academic freedom . In response to Nazi manipulations of university faculty in Germany, the modern conception of tenure in US higher education originated with the American Association of University Professors ' (AAUP) 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure. Jointly formulated and endorsed by

4012-432: The security granted by tenure is necessary to recruit talented individuals into university professorships, because in many fields private industry jobs pay significantly more; as Schrecker puts it, providing professors "the kind of job security that most other workers can only dream of" counterbalances universities' inability to compete with the private sector: "Universities, after all, are not corporations and cannot provide

4080-607: The specificity of cellular interaction and the size of the genome. This early translation apparatus would have produced a group of structurally similar, functionally equivalent proteins, rather than a single protein. Furthermore, because of this reduced specificity, all cellular components were susceptible to horizontal gene transfer, and rapid evolution occurred at the level of the ecosystem. The transition to modern cells (the " Darwinian Threshold ") occurred when organisms evolved translation mechanisms with modern levels of fidelity: improved performance allowed cellular organization to reach

4148-457: The structure of DNA in 1953. Woese published a series of papers on the topic. In one, he deduced a correspondence table between what was then known as "soluble RNA" and DNA based upon their respective base pair ratios. He then re-evaluated experimental data associated with the hypothesis that viruses used one base, rather than a triplet, to encode each amino acid, and suggested 18 codons, correctly predicting one for proline . Other work established

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4216-429: The traditional form of academic freedom still exists, misunderstood and imperiled as it may be. It exists by virtue of two practices that protect the job security and institutional authority of college and university teachers: tenure and faculty governance. It exists as well because of the procedural guarantees that surround those practices... My own experiences prove tenure's value. As a historian who wants to conform to

4284-434: The validity of Woese's phylogenetically valid classification was a slow process. Prominent biologists including Salvador Luria and Ernst Mayr objected to his division of the prokaryotes. Not all criticism of him was restricted to the scientific level. A decade of labor-intensive oligonucleotide cataloging left him with a reputation as "a crank," and Woese would go on to be dubbed as "Microbiology's Scarred Revolutionary" by

4352-410: The vast majority of the biosphere's genetic, metabolic, and ecologic niche diversity. As microbes are crucial for many biogeochemical cycles and to the continued function of the biosphere, Woese's efforts to clarify the evolution and diversity of microbes provided an invaluable service to ecologists and conservationists . It was a major contribution to the theory of evolution and to our knowledge of

4420-449: Was demonstrated by University of Copenhagen in 2016, when the university fired the internationally renowned professor, Hans Thybo , due to what they regarded as unacceptable and untenable behavior (putting pressure on postdoc in regards of an employment survey and using private emails for work related matters despite repeated warnings about it). The handling of the firing was criticized by other researchers. A later court decision ruled that

4488-518: Was in fact a product of these studies". Woese also speculated about an era of rapid evolution in which considerable horizontal gene transfer occurred between organisms. First described by Woese and Fox in a 1977 paper and explored further with microbiologist Jane Gibson in a 1980 paper, these organisms, or progenotes , were imagined as protocells with very low complexity due to their error-prone translation apparatus ("noisy genetic transmission channel"), which produced high mutation rates that limited

4556-502: Was quickly accepted as the most important distinction among organisms; yet they were nevertheless skeptical of microbiologists' attempts to construct a natural phylogenetic classification of bacteria. However, it became generally assumed that all life shared a common prokaryotic (implied by the Greek root πρό (pro-), before, in front of) ancestor. In 1977, Woese and George E. Fox experimentally disproved this universally held hypothesis about

4624-444: Was the life blood of universities. In 1897 Andrews was forced to offer his resignation, but there was a backlash by faculty and students who advocated that he should be protected under the principles of free speech. The board reversed its decision and refused Andrews' resignation. A year later, Andrews resigned anyway. Before Nazism , Germany had been a leader in academic tenure, but free speech and tenure were severely curtailed under

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