Lisa Holland | May 13, 1990 | 4 min read
For the better part of this century, microbiologists have largely ignored evolutionary relationships among bacteria. But a revolution has occurred in microbiology with the advent of nucleic sequencing: Today, new phylogenetic relationships can be determined in far more detail and depth than was ever thought possible. Carl R. Woese, 62, of the department of microbiology at the University of Illinois in Urbana, is widely considered the leader of this revolution. His 1987 review, "Bacterial evolu