Thomas Cavalier-Smith

From Freepedia

Professor Thomas (Tom) Cavalier-Smith, 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. He also proposed that all chromista and alveolata share the same common ancestor. He named this new group the Chromalveolates. Prof. Cavalier-Smith has also worked on issues such as the origin of various cellular organelles (including the nucleus), 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.