Bill Martin

Bill Martin studied biology at Texas A&M and the University of Hannover. He did his PhD at the Max-Planck Institute for Breeding Research in Cologne under the generous supervision of Heinz Saedler, who discovered the transposons known as IS elements. After fi nishing his PhD in 1988, he did his postdoctoral work on chloroplastcytosol isoenzymes, endosymbiosis, and gene transfer at the University of Braunschweig. In 1999, he received a full professorship at the University of Düsseldorf. His current interests are endosymbiosis, early evolution, and the origin of life.