Scientist Edward Osborne " E.O. " Wilson , who famously spell in his memoir " Naturalist , " " Most youngster have a bug menstruation . I never acquire out of mine,“has diedat the age of 92 .
Wilson , sometimes name a advanced - dayCharles Darwin , was weigh the world ’s world-class authority on ants — in special their conduct and societal structure . Broadening his scope , he apply that same perspective when canvass the nature of humans , finding important parallel in both community , such as the desire to live in groups and build complex societies . Wilson was also a trailblazer of the concept ofbiodiversity , a term used to describe the biological multifariousness of life on Earth at every spirit level .
A Biographical Sketch
Wilson was bear in Birmingham , Alabama , in 1929 but grew up dividing his time between the Gulf Coast near Mobile and the suburbs of Washington , D.C. He was enamored with the natural human race and spent his childhood riding his bike , exploring the wood and fishing . Though a sportfishing chance event leave him blinded in one eye when he was young , it make him to peg down his focus on the subject field of insects — bugology — which he could examine in detail through a microscope .
Wilson was still in high school in 1940 when he reported the first dependency ofred imported fire antsin the U.S. After clear both bachelor ’s and schoolmaster ’s academic degree in biology from the University of Alabama , he went to Harvard University to act upon on a Ph.D. in biology in 1951 . He remained there for his intact career as a fellow and a module appendage .
Wilson, the Writer
A prolific investigator and author , Wilson authored 36 book , include the innovational 1967 workplace " The Theory of Island Biogeography , " with Robert H. MacArthur , which greatly influenced the flying field of environmental science and the conservation biota movement . Other celebrated books include " The Insect Societies " ( which was a 1972 National Book Award finalist and in 1999 named as one of the Top 100 Science Books of the Century ) ; " Sociobiology " ( which was a 1976 finalist for the National Book Award ) ; " On Human Nature " ( winner of the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for general non - fiction ) ; " The pismire , " with Bert Hölldobler ( winner of the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for general non - fabrication ) ; and his memoir , " The Naturalist " ( published in 1994 , which gain ground laurels from the Los Angeles Times , The New York Times Book Review and the National Book Critics Circle ) .
As a writer , Wilson had a strong talent for storytelling and narrative . His writing was remindful and approachable , even for referee who would n’t normally gravitate toward scientific matter .
" He helped make a space for people who are still trying to develop that sense of narrative about science in the face of science that has become highly dependent on numbers , " saysBill Finch , an award - winning rude history writer and a friend of Wilson ’s . " Ed balanced both . "
Finch is the former preservation director forThe Nature Conservancyin Alabama and founder of thePaint Rock Forest Research Center . Finch ’s first photo to Wilson ’s body of work was through the book " The hypothesis of Island Biogeography . "
" Anybody who study natural history runs headfirst into Ed ’s work ; you ca n’t debar it , " he articulate . " It fundamentally says we can describe islands as a deal of unlike things . Sometimes they are real island like an island in a stream or in the Gulf . Sometimes they are islands create by humans . Sometimes they are islands create by difference in geology . But we know , and he demonstrated that it came down to , that the small the island , the greater the fortune that species in that island are going to disappear . It made people think about biology and raw account where they are . I suddenly take off looking at Alabama and realizing these little islands that I was looking at , with all these wonderful plants , that were now lilliputian islands because of the way humans had treated the surround were in real trouble . "
Finch ’s next vulnerability was in the mid-1990s in a phone call from Wilson himself , the result of read a newspaper story Finch had written about forests in Alabama .
" He say , ' This is Ed Wilson , ' " Finch recall , " I opine , ' OK , what ’s your question , ' and , at some point in the conversation — luckily fairly early on — I realized by the questions he was asking , it was E.O. Wilson . We begin a conversation about conservation in Alabama and how to do it and make it skillful that has survive many year .
" I do n’t retrieve anyone before Ed emphasized the concept of biodiversity the mode he did , " Finch says . " We may have thought here ’s a species we can reap drugs from or here ’s some species that are rarified that we need to protect , but Ed was read no . These are companions . And that ’s really significant . "
Connectedness and Biodiversity
Wilson further amplified that whim of connectedness extending from living thing ( biology ) to other discipline — anthropology , psychology , doctrine , even the arts — in his 1998 book of account , " Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge . " In it he argued that " everything in our worldly concern is organise in terms of a modest issue of fundamental natural laws that incorporate the principles underlying every offset of learning . "
Finch ’s friendship with Wilson was evident in the 2015 PBS documentary , " E.O. Wilson of Ants and Men , " during which the two men cuckold through an Alabama woodland . It was one of many visits Wilson took to reconnect with his Alabama roots .
" We arranged a trip inside the Mobile - Tensaw Delta to see some of the noteworthy mountain , " says Finch . " On his 87th or 88th birthday he wanted to collect ants in the delta so we did that . We also went to a fortune of other areas , the Red Hills , which is a center of oak tree diversity and pitcher plant bog . I ’m younger than Ed but it was like two boys get into the woods , having a great sentence research . "
Wilson retired from teaching in 1996 , but remained a prof emeritus until his death . In 2005 , theE.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundationwas launched to upgrade worldwide understanding of the grandness of biodiversity and the saving of our biological heritage .
