Naturalist: E. O. Wilson, 1929-2021

In his long and distinguished career, scientist and author Edward O. Wilson, who died on 26 December, wrote as much for a popular audience as he did for his academic peers.  In addition to several books on ants (on which he was a world authority), he published widely on evolutionary biology and conservation.  One of his collaborations with fellow ant expert Bert Hölldobler, The Ants, won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.
Wilson’s career was not without controversy.  In the 1970s he helped to establish the field of sociobiology, which holds that animal social behavior (including that of humans) has an evolutionary basis, an idea that some feared could promote a deterministic view of human culture.
More recently, Wilson has written about the need for the preservation of global biodiversity in books such as Half-Earth: Our Planet’s Fight for Life.  He also published a well-received autobiography, Naturalist, about his Alabama boyhood, education, and rise to scientific prominence.  (He even published a novel, Anthill, about an Alabamian youth with a naturalist bent similar to his own.)

Check out the following titles by Wilson from our collection (the list includes two of his collaborations with Hölldobler).  Also recommended is a new biography of Wilson by Pulitzer Prize–winning author Richard Rhodes, Scientist: E. O. Wilson, a Life in Nature.