William Martin (born February 16, 1957, in Bethesda, Maryland) is an American botanist and microbiologist, currently Head of the Institut für Molekulare Evolution, Heinrich Heine Universität, Düsseldorf.
Martin's PhD is from Max-Planck-Institut für Züchtungsforschung, Cologne, where he did postdoctoral research, followed by further postdoctoral work at Institut für Genetik, Technische Universität Braunschweig, where he obtained his Habilitation in 1992.
[citation needed] In 1999, Martin became full (C4) professor at Universität Düsseldorf.
Martin is co-author, with Miklos Mueller of Rockefeller University, of the 1998 paper The Hydrogen hypothesis for the first eukaryote.
[citation needed] A wealth of subsequent research papers include contributions, independently and with Michael J. Russell of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, to understanding the geochemical origins of cells and their biochemical pathways.