# Allan Wilson **Domain:** Molecular Evolution / Human Origins **Doc Type:** Thinker Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition **Allan C. Wilson** was a UC Berkeley biochemist whose group helped establish molecular evolution as a way to reconstruct relationships and divergence using proteins and DNA. ## Nexus Context With Vincent Sarich, Wilson used molecular differences to argue in the 1960s for a much more recent human–African ape divergence than many paleontologists then accepted. Later, Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking and Wilson used mitochondrial DNA to infer a recent African maternal ancestry for living humans. [[articles/The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley|The Evolutionary Roots of Silicon Valley]] makes Wilson's laboratory a bridge from biological archive to computational inference. The molecular clock is not a literal constant: rates vary among lineages, genes and models. Its power comes from calibrated statistical reasoning, not from DNA behaving like an exact chronometer. ## Sources / Provenance - UC Berkeley memorial and research history: https://newsarchive.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/archival/allan_wilson_obit.shtml - Cann, Stoneking and Wilson, “Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution,” _Nature_ 325 (1987): https://www.nature.com/articles/325031a0 ## See Also [[wiki/Vincent Sarich|Vincent Sarich]], [[wiki/Molecular Clock|Molecular Clock]], [[wiki/Mitochondrial Eve|Mitochondrial Eve]], [[wiki/Molecular Evolution|Molecular Evolution]]