Carl Woese Papers

Overview

Scope and Contents

Biographical Note

Subject Terms

Administrative Information



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Collection Overview

Title: Carl Woese Papers, 1911-2013Add to your cart.View associated digital content.

ID: 15/15/22

Primary Creator: Woese, Carl (1928-2012)

Extent: 143.8 cubic feet. More info below.

Arrangement: Alphabetical by subject and chronological.

Date Acquired: 01/15/2013

Subjects: American Society for Microbiology, Bacteriology, Evolution, Faculty Papers, Genetics, Microbiology, Microbiology Department

Languages: English

Scope and Contents of the Materials

Papers of Carl Woese (1928-2012), Professor of Microbiology (1964-2012), include correspondence (1962-2007), laboratory notes (1965-83), reprints (1954-2010), reprint requests (1966-75, 1989-90), dissertations by Woese students (1967-88) and award certificates, computer printouts, reports, drafts, notes, photographs, slides and transparencies (1911-2012) concerning microbiology, evolution, the genetic code, bacteria, translation, ribosomes, ribosomal RNA sequencing, bacterial taxonomy, discovery of Archaea, trees of life, origin of life, exobiology, Charles Darwin, the MacArthur Award, the Leeuwenhoek Medal, the Crafoord Prize, NASA (1977-92, 2005), the National Science Foundation (1976-93), the Office of Naval Research (1985-93), the Institute for Genomic Biology, and the Microbiology Department. Correspondents include William Balch, Mirko Beljanski, Richard Burkhardt, Francis Crick, Max Delbruck, W. Ford Doolittle, Volker Erdmann, Joe Felsenstein, George Fox, Stephen Jay Gould, Francois Gros, Robin Gutell, Harlyn Halvorson, Hyman Hartman, Otto Kandler, James Lake, Tom Langworthy, Peter Lengyel, Michael Madigan, Lynn Margulis, Alistair Matheson, Ernst Mayr, James McCloskey, Jacques Monod, R. G. E. Murray, Jacques Ninio, Norman Pace, Karl Popper, Carl Sagan, Jan Sapp, Tracy Sonneborn, Sol Spiegelman, Erko Stackebrandt, Roger Stanier, Karl Stetter, J. Craig Venter, Gunter Wachtershauser, Yuki Atsushi, Wolfram Zillig, and Emile Zuckerland.

This record series also contains 110.8 cubic feet of X-ray film showing ribosomal RNA patterns of hundreds of microrganisms.

Biographical Note

Carl Woese (1928-2012), who revolutionized the science of microbiology, has been called the Darwin of the 20th century. Darwin's theory of evolution dealt with multicellular organisms; Woese brought the single-celled bacteria into the evolutionary fold. The Syracuse-born Woese began his early career as a newly minted Yale Ph.D. studying viruses but he soon joined in the global effort to crack the genetic code. His 1967 book The Genetic Code: The Molecular Basis for Genetic Expression became a standard in the field. Woese hoped to discover the evolutionary relationships of microorganisms, and he believed that an RNA molecule located within the ribosoma, the cell's protein factory offered him a way to get at these connections.

A few years after becoming a professor of microbiology at the University of Illinois in 1964, Woese launched an ambitious sequencing program that would ultimately catalog partial ribosomal RNA sequences of hundreds of microorganisms. Woese's work showed that bacteria evolve, and his perfected RNA fingerprinting technique provided the first definitive means of classifying bacteria. In 1976, in the course of this painstaking cataloging effort, Woese came across a ribosomal RNA fingerprint from a strange methane-producing organism that did not look like the bacterial sequences he knew so well. As it turned out, Woese had discovered a third form of life, a form of life distinct from the bacteria and from the eukaryotes (organisms, like humans, whose cells have nuclei); he christened these creatures the archaebacteria only to later rename them the archaea to better differentiate them from the bacteria.

In 1980, four years after his discovery of the archaea, Woese unveiled the Big Tree, the first tree of life based entirely on ribosomal RNA data. Woese's tree attempted to trace the evolutionary relationships of the three forms of life going back to their divergence from a common ancestor over three billion years ago. Continuing to probe the origins of life for the rest of his career, Woese would help develop such seminal concepts as the RNA World and the progenote. a hypothetical communal state of life predating the first cell. In 1990 Woese proposed that all life be grouped into three domains: the Archaea, the Bacteria, and the Eucarya. This idea met a great deal of resistance from many of his fellow biologists but is now largely enshrined in the textbooks. Carl Woese died on December 30, 2012, in Urbana, Illinois.

Subject/Index Terms

American Society for Microbiology
Bacteriology
Evolution
Faculty Papers
Genetics
Microbiology
Microbiology Department

Administrative Information

Repository: University of Illinois Archives

Alternate Extent Statement: and 10.9 gigabytes of digital files.

Access Restrictions: To protect the integrity of the Woese Papers, materials will be provided to researchers one folder at a time. Individual sheets of paper or other items will be counted by an Archives staff member before and after a folder is provided for examination.

Appraisal Information: Additional digital materials (electrornic records) are currently closed to reserach, pending final processing. These include complementary records to the online materials, as well as further information on Professor Woese's email correspondence with colleagues, research materials, including publication reprints and drafts of manuscripts, genomic research data, bioinformatics software used to analyze multiple biological sequence alignments, and collaborations with historian of science Jan Sapp on the writing of The New Foundations of Evolution (2009), and with author Joy Hakim on the history of biology. Materials need to be apprasied and private information identified and/or removed.

Related Materials:

George E. Fox Papers at the University of Houston Libraries Special Collections:

https://findingaids.lib.uh.edu/repositories/2/resources/455

Processing Information: Digital materials include complementary records to the online materials, as well as further information on Professor Woese's email correspondence with colleagues, research materials, inlcuding publication reprints and drafts of manuscripts, genomic research data, bioinformatics software used to analyze multiple biological sequence alignments, and collaborations with historian of science Jan Sapp on the writing of The New Foundations of Evolution (2009), and with author Joy Hakim on the history of biology.

PDF Box/Folder List

URL: https://files.archon.library.illinois.edu/uasfa/1515022.pdf

PDF finding aid for Carl Woese Papers (15/15/22)


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