About Lynn Margulis:
Lynn Margulis is as synonymous with symbiosis as Charles Darwin’s is with evolution." In particular, Margulis transformed and fundamentally framed current understanding of the evolution of cells with nuclei – an event Ernst Mayr called "perhaps the most important and dramatic event in the history of life" – by proposing it to have been the result of symbiotic mergers of bacteria. Margulis was also the co-developer of Gaia theory with the British chemist James Lovelock, proposing that the Earth functions as a single self-regulating system, and was the principal defender and promulgater of the five kingdom classification of Robert Whittaker.