Morris Goodman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to navigationJump to search
For the 19th-century American politician, see Morris L. Goodman.
Morris Goodman (1925 – November 14, 2010, Michigan[1]) was an American scientist known for
his work in molecular evolution and molecular systematics. Goodman was a Distinguished
Professor at the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State University School of
Medicine, editor-in-chief of the journal Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, and a member of
the anthropology section of the United States National Academy of Sciences.

Life and work[edit]

Goodman grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and spent many years in Detroit, Michigan as the
only Wayne State University faculty member appointed to the National Academy of Science until
his death on November 14, 2010. After high school, he attended the University of Wisconsin-
Madison for one year, then in 1943 entered the Army Air Forces, where he served as a navigator
for the remainder of World War II. He was married in 1946, shortly after returning to college. He
became interested in science after a comparative anatomy course; the professor, Harold Wolfe,
recruited him as a teaching assistant. Goodman graduated with a degree in zoology and a minor
in biochemistry, and continued on at Wisconsin for his Masters and Ph.D. degrees under Wolfe (a
former student of Alan Boyden). Upon finishing a dissertation on the antigen-
antibody precipitin reaction, he went to Caltech for post-doctoral work, supported by
an NIH fellowship.[2]
Working with Dan Campbell at Caltech (within the Division of Chemistry headed by Linus
Pauling), Goodman worked on the immunological properties of hemoglobins, including the
immunological differences between normal and sickle-cell hemoglobin. According to a 2004
interview, Goodman became interested in evolutionary problems around 1957-1958. After
research stints at the University of Illinois Medical School and the Detroit Institute of Cancer
Research, he embarked—with his friend Morris Wilson—on studies of the degree of variability in
proteins expressed early vs. late in development.[2]
By 1961, Goodman's comparative immunology research produced some results, particularly on
the evolutionary relationships among primates, that were attracting interest from evolutionary
biologists. He presented his ideas at the New York Academy of Sciences and the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research. At the latter meeting, he and two others using
molecular approaches to evolutionary problems (Emile Zuckerkandl and Harold Klinger) were
confronted by three of the "framers" of the modern evolutionary synthesis: Ernst Mayr, G. G.
Simpson, and Theodosius Dobzhansky. During the early history of molecular evolution, traditional
evolutionists were both interested in and apprehensive about the advent of molecular techniques
to evolutionary biology; Simpson later referred to Goodman as "an old friendly antagonist.".[2]
Through the 1960s and 1970s, Goodman continued his evolutionary work based on serology,
eventually with graduate students working under him. In the 1970s he also started using protein
sequence data for his molecular taxonomy work. In a 1975 paper in Nature,[3] Goodman and his
collaborators used sequence data to reconstruct the evolutionary history of hemoglobin (including
possible ancestral sequences) and analyze which sites on the hemoglobin complex had evolved
at which stages. Goodman called this the first "hard evidence of Darwinian evolution". In 1982,
with another Nature paper,[4] Goodman did the same for the DNA sequences of the hemoglobin
genes.[2]

References[edit]
1. ^ "Morris Goodman, distinguished professor and groundbreaking researcher, dies". Wayne State
University School of Medicine. November 16, 2010. Retrieved October 19,2011.
 2. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Interview with Morris Goodman Archived June 25, 2007, at Archive.today, July
28, 2004, conducted by Joel Hagen. From Perspectives on Molecular Evolutionwebsite, by
Michael R. Dietrich. Accessed August 19, 2007.
3. ^ Goodman, Morris; G. William Moore; Genji Matsuda (1975-02-20). "Darwinian evolution in the
genealogy of haemoglobin". Nature. 253 (5493): 603–
608. Bibcode:1975Natur.253..603G. doi:10.1038/253603a0. PMID 1089897.
4. ^ Czelusniak, John; Morris Goodman; David Hewett-Emmett; Mark L. Weiss; Patrick J. Venta;
Richard E. Tashian (1982-07-15). "Phylogenetic origins and adaptive evolution of avian and
mammalian haemoglobin genes". Nature. 298 (5871): 297–
300. Bibcode:1982Natur.298..297C. doi:10.1038/298297a0. PMID 6178039.

External links