Lynn Margulis: A visionary
Lynn Margulis is considered as one of brilliant scientists of modern era. Her theory that eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells is regarded as one of the greatest achievements of the 21st century evolutionary biology.
Lynn Margulis was born on March 5, 1938, is an American biologist and University Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1983, received from William J. Clinton the Presidential Medal of Science in 1999.
When she was at Boston in 1966 she wrote a theoretical paper entitled “The Origin of Mitosing Eukaryotic Cells”,which was rejected by as many as 15 leading journals of that time. It was finally accepted by The Journal of Theoretical Biology and today it is regarded as a landmark in modern endosymbiotic theory.
We all have mitochondria in all of our cells, so do all animals and plants on this planet.It is largely due to Lynn Margulis that the hypothesis that mitochondria were once free-living bacteria, is now considered a proven scientific theory in biology. 
The symbiotic origin of mitochondria is no longer a controversial theory and a widely accepted proven theory in biology.The underlying theme of endosymbiotic theory was interdependence and cooperative existence of multiple prokaryotic organisms; one organism engulfed another, yet both survived and eventually evolved over millions of years into eukaryotic cells, as mentioned in detail in her famous 1970 book “Origin of Eukaryotic Cells” .
However her thoery of endosymbiosis is well accepted today but some of her other ideas doesnot go well with other eminent scientists in the field.The most controversial claim of Margulis is that symbiosis is the main mechanism for creating new species in evolution. Ernst Mayr believes that Lynn exaggerate the role of symbiosis in the creation of new species. The reason is that symbiosis does not create new genes.The other theory that accumulation of mutations do not lead to anything useful is proven to be false by the facts of molecular and evolutionary genetics.
Listen what Greats have to say about Lynn Margulis:
Lynn is marvelous. I hope I’m not being too Pollyanna-ish, but her notion of the symbiotic origin of the eukaryotic cell was probably the grandest idea in modern biology. Lynn was put down as having had a really crazy idea, and, of course, we can relate to that. Now it’s taught in all the textbooks as the self-evident truth. It was a marvelous thing. Her involvement with Gaia has been more messy.–Niles Eldredge
I greatly admire Lynn Margulis’s sheer courage and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I’m referring to the theory that the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology, and I greatly admire her for it.–Richard Dawkins
Lynn Margulis is an exceptional and brave scientist of modern era but unfortunately not always credited for her contribution to evolutionary theory.
Check a related article on Hoxfulmonsters about recent work done by James A Lake.
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References:
Margulis, Lynn, 1970, Origin of Eukaryotic Cells, Yale University Press, ISBN 0-300-01353-1
Lynn Sagan (1967). “On the origin of mitosing cells”. J Theor Bio. 14 (3): 255–274. doi:10.1016/0022-5193(67)90079-3
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