Edward O. Wilson is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author and research scientist, who is best known for having developed and popularized the fields of sociobiology and biodiversity. He holds the posts of Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology at Harvard University, where he has been based since 1953.

Dr. Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama, and grew up in a series of towns in Alabama and Florida as well as Washington, D.C. After earning a B.S. and M.S. in biology at the University of Alabama, he joined the graduate program at University of Tennessee for a year, then transferred to Harvard University, where he earned a Ph.D. in 1955. From 1953 to 1956 he was a Junior Fellow in Harvard's Society of Fellows. During this period he began a series of research field trips that were to take him to many parts of the South Pacific and New World tropics. In 1956 he joined the Harvard faculty.

Early in his career, Wilson conducted work on the classification and ecology of ants in New Guinea and other Pacific islands and in the American tropics. In 1963 this work led him to his first major synthesis, the theory of island biogeography, which he developed with Robert H. MacArthur of Princeton University. The theory greatly influenced the discipline of ecology and became a cornerstone of conservation biology. Applied to "habitat islands," such as forests in a sea of agricultural land, it has affected the planning and assessment of parks and reserves around the world. In the late 1960s Wilson and Daniel Simberloff conducted experiments in the Florida Keys that documented the basic principles of island biogeographic theory.

In the late 1950s and 1960s, Wilson also played a key role in the development of the new field of chemical ecology. With several collaborators he worked out much of the pheromone language of ants, and with William H. Bossert of Harvard University he created the first general theory of properties of chemical communication. Because all plants and microorganisms, as well as the vast majority of animals, communicate primarily or entirely by pheromones, the importance of this work is considerable.

In 1971 Wilson published his second major synthesis, The Insect Societies, in which he introduced the new discipline of sociobiology: the systematic study of the biological basis of social behavior in all kinds of organisms. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) extended the subject to vertebrates and tied it more closely to evolutionary biology. Sociobiology: The New Synthesis has been ranked in a poll of the officers and fellows of the international Animal Behaviour Society as the most important book on animal behavior of all time and is regarded today as the founding text of sociobiology and its offshoot, evolutionary psychology.

Sociobiology: The New Synthesis also included a brief analysis of the origins of human nature, which set off a controversy on the role of biology in human behavior. To provide a more complete account of the subject and to answer scientific (as distinguished from political) criticisms, Wilson published the widely acclaimed On Human Nature in 1978. With Charles Lumsden, he went on to develop the first general theory of gene-culture coevolution in the 1981 work Genes, Mind, and Culture.

By the late 1970s, Wilson was actively involved in global conservation, adding to both original research and the promotion of biodiversity research. In 1984 he published Biophilia, which explored the evolutionary and psychological basis of humanity's attraction to the natural environment. This book, which has been influential in shaping the modern conservation ethic, was followed in 1988 by BioDiversity, edited by Wilson, based on the proceedings of the first United States national conference on the subject. This was the work that introduced the term "biodiversity" to the language. In 1992 Wilson published Diversity of Life, now a standard work, which synthesized the principles and most important practical issues of biodiversity. His 2002 book The Future of Life has become equally influential. During all this time, Wilson was still deeply engaged in basic research. In 2003, he published Pheidole in the New World, A Dominant, Hyperdiverse Ant Genus, a monograph of 19 percent of the known ant species of the Western Hemisphere.

While continuing his research on the systematics and biogeography of ants, Wilson had become increasingly involved in the global conservation movement. In addition to writing books and articles on the subject and lecturing in many countries, he has served on the boards of directors of the American Museum of Natural History, Conservation International, The Nature Conservancy and World Wildlife Fund and has been a key consultant of the New York Botanical Garden, Columbia University's Earth Institute and many other environmental and scientific organizations.

In 1998 Wilson extended his program of evolutionary thought in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, which argues for a reversal of the current fragmentation of knowledge and a return to the ideal of bridging the sciences and humanities. He is currently working on books on the theory of evolutionary forces and (with Bert Hölldobler) on the biology of superorganisms, as well as conducting field research on the ecology and biogeography of the West Indian ant fauna.

The more than 100 awards received by Wilson from around the world include the National Medal of Science, two Pulitzer Prizes (for On Human Nature and, with Bert Hölldobler, The Ants) and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science (given by the Academy in fields of science not covered by the Nobel Prize). He also has received both of the teaching prizes voted by the students of Harvard College.