A short history about the twin fields of primate molecular phylogenetics and primate genomics Morris Goodman1 1Department of Anatomy & Cell Biology, Wayne State University School of Medicine Abstract Among the immunoprecipitin data described by Nuttall in 1904 in his monograph, “Blood Immunity and Blood Relationship”, were the data that suggested humans are closely related to chimpanzees and gorillas. During the early 1960s, upon using an immunodiffusion method to observe the cross reactions of individual proteins from different primates, I obtained clear evidence for grouping and classifying chimpanzees and gorillas with humans rather than orangutans, with some cross reactions indicating that chimpanzees and humans share the closest kinship. I also proposed that there was a slowdown in rates of molecular evolution in hominoids. This hypothesis and selectionist vs. neutralist concepts concerning molecular evolution are now subject to testing by extensive comparative DNA sequence data. During the 1970s and 1980s, amino acid sequence  data overtook immunological data in the study of primate phylogeny, and, from the middle 1980s on, comparative DNA sequence data have been accumulating exponentially.  There are now efficient computer programs for reconstructing evolutionary history from sequence data, and there are already enough comparative DNA sequence data to depict the phylogenetic relationships of nearly all extant primate genera. Most noteworthy, the presently available molecular data provide very strong evidence that chimpanzees and humans share the closest kinship, not chimpanzees and gorillas. A marriage of primate molecular phylogenetics and primate genomics, in which sequenced primate genomes encompass the full adaptive diversity of the order, will make it possible to identify the genetic underpinnings of humankind and to distinguish those underpinnings that are truly unique to humans from those that are shared with other primates. Valuable insights should also be forthcoming from the clade-specific genetic traits of non-human primate clades.