Carl R. Woese, 84, a Syracuse native and the microbiology professor credited with discovering the third domain of life, died Sunday at his Illinois home due to complications from pancreatic cancer.

Woese was born July 15, 1928 to Gertrude and Carl Woese, and the family lived at 256 Robineau Road. His father was an executive of Haberle Brewing Co. and founder of the Robeson & Woese engineering firm.

Woese earned bachelors degrees in math and physics from Amherst College and a Ph.D. in biophysics at Yale University. He studied medicine at the University of Rochester, was a postdoctoral researcher in biophysics at Yale and worked as a biophysicist at the General Electric Research Laboratory in Schenectady, before joining the microbiology faculty at the University of Illinois in 1964. He was also a professor at the universitys Institute for Genomic Biology.

It is truly impossible to adequately describe or to categorize his contributions to the University of Illinois, to biology and to the world during his long and distinguished career here. The campus community has lost one of our giants this week, University of Illinois Chancellor Phyllis Wise said in release.

In 1977, Woese and his colleagues published two papers overturning a universally held assumption that the tree of life had just two branches bacteria (called prokarya), and everything else (eukarya). Their discovery added archaea, as a third main branch of the evolutionary family tree. Archaea resemble bacteria, but are biochemically and genetically different, and are often abundant in environments that are hostile to all other life forms.

Dr. George E. Fox, professor of Biology and Biochemistry at the University of Houston, was a co-discoverer with Woese of the micro-organisms they originally called archaeabacteria. He said, I think it was a very important discovery. It sometimes goes under the name of the third form of life. It was a fundamental discovery in microbiology.

Woese received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation genius award, the National Medal of Science, the Leeuwenhoek Medal awarded once every 10 years and several other honors.

Excerpt from:
Carl R. Woese, Syracuse native and noted biologist, dies at 84