HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS to publish first English translation of Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky’s 1924 masterpiece “Symbiogenesis: The New Principle of Evolution“
The Margulis Lab is delighted to announce that Harvard University Press will publish Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution (1924) by the great Russian botanist Boris Mikhailovich Kozo-Polyansky (1890-1957). The book, acquired by editor-in-chief Michael Fisher, will be available, we hope, by spring 2010. The manuscript was translated by bibliophile Victor Fet, Professor of Biology at Marshall University, Huntington, West Virginia. Fet, an expert on scorpions and their mitochondrial DNA, a poet and writer in both languages, is the perfect translator to have sensitively brought this important, short and entirely accessible scientific gem into English. Conversant with modern zoology, genetics, cell biology and born in Russia as a son of a computer scientist, Fet's early education was in Novosibirsk, Siberia. Kozo-Polyansky first recognized the profound difference between prokaryotes (elements of life) and eukaryotes (symbionts composed of these elements) 3 years before Edouard Chatton coined the terms "procariotíque" and "eucariotíque". The word cell from the late 19th through most of the 20th century meant only "nucleated cell" (=eukaryotic cell); prokaryotes had many names including bacillus, bacterium, bioblast, biococcus, coccus, cyanophyte, cytode, flagellated cytode, micrococcus, moneran and nepheloid that depended on context.
Margulis and Raven replace the author's inadequate drawings with modern micrographs of the symbiotic phenomena he reviewed. Professor Jan Sapp, York niversity, Toronto, the great science historian, scholar of genetics and evolution including microbial evolution, introduces Kozo-Polyansky's ignored achievement in its geographical and historical context with an opening short commentary. The Kozo-Polyansky book will be entirely relevant to today's story of evolution because of its new stunning micrographs and modern references. We must sadly acknowledge that Kozo-Polyansky was so young when he wrote his masterpiece but lack of response probably led him to abandon all work on symbiogenesis. He turned to botanical research and civic achievement but died long before science, especially in the West, recognized his contribution. Amends will be made as much as possible by Margulis who will receive a Darwin-Wallace medal at the presentation ceremony at the worldwide celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth (Thursday, February 12, 2009). This will take place in the late afternoon at the Linnean Society, Burlington House, Picadilly Circus, London, U.K.
