ancestors, over several millions of years since divergence from chimpanzees. The mtDNA data, however, strongly support the alternative and now generally accepted hypothesis, that all humans descend relatively recently from a common, relatively small African population. Death and legacy Wilson became ill with leukaemia, and after a bone marrow transplant, died on Sunday, 21 July 1991, at the Fred Hutchinson Memorial Cancer Research Center in Seattle. He had been scheduled to give the keynote address at an international conference the same day. He was 56, at the height of his scientific recognition and powers. He was survived by his wife, Leona Wilson (died in 2009), and two children, Ruth (1961-2014), of East Lansing, Michigan, and David (born 1964), of San Francisco. Wilson's success can be attributed to his strong interest and depth of knowledge in biochemistry and evolutionary biology, his insistence of quantification of evolutionary phenomena, and his early recognition of new molecular techniques that could shed light on questions of evolutionary biology. After development of quantitative immunological methods, his lab was the first to recognise restriction endonuclease mapping analysis as a quantitative evolutionary genetic method, which led to his early use of DNA sequencing, and the then-nascent technique of PCR to obtain large DNA sets for genetic analysis of populations. He trained scores of undergraduate, graduate (17 women and 17 men received their doctoral degrees in his lab), and post-doctoral students in molecular evolutionary biology, including sabbatical visitors from six continents. His lab published more than 300 technical papers, and was recognised in the 1970s ~ 80s as the mecca for those wishing to enter the field of molecular evolution. The Allan Wilson Centre for Molecular Ecology and Evolution was established in 2002 in his honour to advance knowledge of the evolution and ecology of New Zealand and Pacific plant and animal life, and human history in the Pacific. The Centre was under the Massey University, at Palmerston North, New Zealand, as a national collaboration among the University of Auckland, Victoria University of Wellington, the University of Otago, University of Canterbury, and the New Zealand Institute for Plant and Food Research. The Centre closed at the end of 2015 when the Government stopped funding it. A 41-minutes documentary film of his life entitled Allan Wilson, Evolutionary: Biochemist, Biologist, Giant of Molecular Biology was released by Films Media Group in 2008. Awards and honours MacArthur Fellow in 1986 Guggenheim Fellow