{"id":26695,"date":"2026-10-30T03:37:31","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:37:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/her-groundbreaking-theory-on-the-origin-of-life-was-rejected-15-times-then-biology-proved-her-right-upworthy\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T03:37:31","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T03:37:31","slug":"her-groundbreaking-theory-on-the-origin-of-life-was-rejected-15-times-then-biology-proved-her-right-upworthy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/her-groundbreaking-theory-on-the-origin-of-life-was-rejected-15-times-then-biology-proved-her-right-upworthy\/","title":{"rendered":"Her groundbreaking theory on the origin of life was rejected 15 times. Then biology proved her right. – Upworthy"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Lynn Margulis had the audacity to challenge Darwin. And we’re lucky she did.
By
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tHeather Wake<\/a>\t\t
By
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t \t\t\t\t\t\tUpworthy Staff<\/a>\t\t
Throughout her prolific and distinguished career, biologist<\/u><\/a> Lynn Margulis made several groundbreaking contributions to science<\/a> that we take for granted as common knowledge today<\/a>. For example, she championed James E. Lovelock\u2019s \u201cGaia concept<\/a>,\u201d which posited that the Earth<\/u><\/a> self-regulates to maintain conditions for life.
But by far, her most notable theory<\/u><\/a> was symbiogenesis. While it was first written off<\/u><\/a> as \u201cstrange\u201d and \u201caesthetically pleasing\u201d but \u201cnot compelling,\u201d it would ultimately prevail, and completely rewrite how we viewed the origin of life itself<\/a>. <\/p>\n

The paper that changed everything<\/h2>\n

In the late 1960s, Margulis wrote a paper titled “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells<\/u><\/a>,” that was quite avant-garde. InThroughout her prolific and distinguished career, biologist Lynn Margulis (1938-2011) made several groundbreaking contributions to science<\/a> that we take for granted as common knowledge today<\/a>. For example, she helped develop James E. Lovelock’s “Gaia concept,”<\/a> which posited that Earth’s living and nonliving systems form a self-regulating system that maintains conditions for life.
But by far, her most notable theory was symbiogenesis. While it met plenty of skepticism, including a 1972 Science<\/em> paper<\/a> that called the symbiotic theory “aesthetically pleasing” but “not compelling,” it would ultimately prevail, and completely rewrite how we viewed the origin of life itself. <\/p>\n

The paper that changed everything<\/h2>\n

In 1967, Margulis, then publishing under the name Lynn Sagan, wrote a paper titled “On the Origin of Mitosing Cells<\/a>,” that was quite avant-garde. In it, she proposed a theory: that life evolved through organisms merging together to become inseparable.
In essence, she argued that cooperation, not just competition, drives some of life’s biggest leaps. This challenged the neo-Darwinian emphasis on competition and gradual mutation that dominated scientific circles, though it didn’t overturn natural selection. Margulis\u2019 paper was rejected by fifteen journals before getting accepted into the Journal of Theoretical Biology<\/em><\/em>. \t\t<\/p>\n

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