Edward O. Wilson

Born: November June 10, 1929; Birmingham, Alabama
Fields of study:Ecology, entomology, ethology, evolutionary science, genetics, zoology
After his graduation from high school in Decatur, Alabama, Edward O. Wilson earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in biology at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa, concentrating his efforts on the study of ants. Continuing his educational pursuits at Harvard University, he earned his doctor’s degree in zoology and received an appointment as a professor of zoology and curator of entomology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. Based on their study of insect societies, Wilson and W. L. Brown proposed the idea of character displacement: that after the populations of two closely related species come into contact, they undergo rapid evolutionary differentiation so as to minimize the chances of competition and hybridization between the two species. Wilson’s definitive work on ants and other social insects, The Insect Societies (1971), treats the societal behavior patterns of many species. It covers numerous aspects of insect societies, ranging from paleontology to formal genetics and from ethology to biochemistry. Providing an account of the natural history of social insects, with their great proliferation of genera, species, and behavioral types, Wilson incorporated concepts from the fields of modern genetics, selection theory, and biomathematics to explain the evolution of insect societies and their diversity in size and longevity. In The Ants (1990), Wilson and Bert Hölldobler published a comprehensive summary of current knowledge on ants. Wilson’s thorough study of insect societies led to his proposal that the biological principles governing animal societies extend to humans, which he explored in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). Wilson theorized that the preservation of the gene, versus the preservation of the individual, is the fundamental concept in evolutionary development. His argument was that social animals, including humans, behave according to rules written in their genes. Since this theory contradicts the belief in free will and suggests that some human groups may be biologically superior to others, it sparked much controversy among scientists and nonscientists alike. In The Diversity of Life (1992), Wilson further investigated how the world’s living species became diverse, as well as the massive species extinctions produced byhumanactivities in the twentieth century. Wilson became the first and only person to receive both the highest award for science in the United States, the National Medal of Science, and the premier literary award, the Pulitzer Prize in literature. He received the latter award for his book On Human Nature (1978) in 1979. In 1990, he was awarded the prestigious Crafoord Prize by the Swedish Academy of Science for his work in ecology. In 1995, Time recognized Wilson as one of the twenty-five most influential people in America. An international poll in 1996 ranked him as one of the hundred most influential scientists of all time. His present research is focused on the concept of consilience, a controversial attempt to unify all knowledge by means of science so that explanations of differing kinds of phenomena are connected and consistent with each other.