Thomas Cavalier-Smith

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Professor Thomas (Tom) Cavalier-Smith (born October 21, 1942), FRS, FRSC, NERC Professorial Fellow, is a Professor of Evolutionary Biology in the Department of Zoology, at the University of Oxford. He was presented with the International Prize for Biology (a prize of 10 million yen) in 2004 ^[1].

Cavalier-Smith has published extensively on the classification of protists. One of his major contributions to biology was his proposal of a sixth kingdom of life: the Chromista, although the evidence for the existence of the group is still open to debate. He also proposed that all chromista and alveolata share the same common ancestor, a claim later borne out by studies of morphological and molecular evidence by other labs. He named this new group the Chromalveolates. Prof. Cavalier-Smith has also published prodigiously on issues such as the origin of various cellular organelles (including the nucleus, mitochondria), genome size evolution, and endosymbiosis. Though fairly well known, many of his strongest claims have been controversial and have not gained widespread acceptance in the scientific community to date.

[edit] Footnotes

1. ^ The Committee on the International Prize for Biology of Japan Society for the Promotion of Science awards the 2004 International Prize for Biology in the field of "Systematic Biology and Taxonomy" to Prof. Thomas Cavalier-Smith, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, UK. Retrieved December 9, 2006.