Nearly 100 faculty, friends and family members gathered at the Townsend Hotel in Birmingham, Mich., recently to celebrate the establishment of the Morris Goodman, Ph.D., and Selma Goodman Endowed Chair in Molecular Anthropology.

The Chair was established to recognize faculty scholarly achievement and to support interdisciplinary research in phylogenomics, the science of determining the function of a gene based on its evolutionary history, and tracing a species' evolution by combining the information from genes or entire genomes.

The Chair will support the furtherance of research and the advancement of knowledge in the evolution of humans and other mammals, and will be jointly appointed through the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics at Wayne State University.

"This Chair is for someone who is willing to do risky transformative research," said Dr. Goodman. "This person will do adventurous things and do what's necessary to advance this field."

Considered a founder in the field of molecular evolution, Dr. Goodman is noted for his research that proved chimpanzees are more closely related to humans than to other apes. Published in 1962, his results caused a commotion in the scientific community. In 1986, he again captured the world's attention with research showing that gorillas, chimps and humans differ genetically by less than 2 percent, and all may have branched off the evolutionary tree at about the same time. Dr. Goodman's controversial findings initially rocked evolutionary theory, but have since been corroborated by scientific groups worldwide.

A faculty member at the School of Medicine since 1958, Dr. Goodman is a member of the WSU Academy of Scholars and recipient of the Distinguished Faculty Award. He is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, two of the highest honors that can be accorded an American scientist or engineer.

Dr. Goodman has held positions as professor in both the Departments of Anatomy and Molecular Biology and Genetics, and adjunct professor in the Department of Anthropology. Presently, Dr. Goodman holds a joint appointment between the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, and the Center for Molecular Medicine and Genetics.

"With Dr. Goodman, we have an individual who has set the bar high," said School of Medicine Dean Robert Mentzer Jr., M.D. "He has given greatly to our educational make-up at the School of Medicine."