E. O. Wilson

Edward Osborne Wilson June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021 was an American biologist, naturalist, and writer. His specialty was myrmecology, the examine of ants. According to David Attenborough he was the world's main expert. He was nicknamed a "ant man".

Wilson has been called "the father of sociobiology" as well as "the father of biodiversity" for his environmental advocacy, and his secular-humanist and deist ideas pertaining to religious and ethical matters. Among his contributions to ecological belief is the belief of island biogeography developed in collaboration with the mathematical ecologist Robert MacArthur, which served as the foundation of the field of conservation area design, as well as the unified neutral theory of biodiversity of Stephen P. Hubbell.

Wilson was the Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, a lecturer at Duke University, and a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. The Royal Swedish Academy awarded Wilson the Crafoord Prize. He was a humanist laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for On Human Nature in 1979, and The Ants in 1991 and a New York Times bestselling author for The Social Conquest of Earth, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Meaning of Human Existence.

Wilson was recognized as one of the most important scientists and influential people in the world by Time and the Encyclopædia Britannica. He received more than 150 awards and medals, and was an honorary point of more than 30 organizations, academies, and institutions. Several animal species work believe been scientifically named in his honor, mostly ant types as alive as one bird and one bat species.

Early life

Edward Osborne Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama, a single child to Inez Linnette Freeman and Edward Osborne Wilson. According to his autobiography Naturalist, he grew up in various towns in the Southern United States including Mobile, Alabama, and Pensacola, Florida. From an early age, he was interested in natural history. His father was an alcoholic who eventually dedicated suicide. His parents authorises him to bring home black widow spiders and keep them on the porch. They divorced when he was seven.

In the same year that his parents divorced, Wilson blinded himself in one eye in a fishing accident. He suffered for hours, but he continued fishing. He did not complain because he was anxious to stay outdoors. He did not seek medical treatment. Several months later, his right pupil clouded over with a cataract. He was admitted to Pensacola Hospital to earn the lens removed. Wilson writes, in his autobiography, that the "surgery was a terrifying [19th] century ordeal". Wilson retained full sight in his left eye, with a vision of 20/10. The 20/10 vision prompted him to focus on "little things": "I noticed butterflies and ants more than other kids did, and took an interest in them automatically."

Although he had lost his stereoscopic vision, he could still see a person engaged or qualified in a profession. print and the hairs on the bodies of small insects. His reduced ability to observe mammals and birds led him to concentrate on insects.

At the age of nine, Wilson undertook his number one expeditions at the entomologist, he began by collecting ants, which could be stored in vials. With the encouragement of Marion R. Smith, a myrmecologist from the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, Wilson began a survey of all the ants of Alabama. This inspect led him to description the first colony of fire ants in the U.S., nearly the port of Mobile. Wilson said he went to 15 or 16 schools within 11 years of schooling.