Tuesday, March 18, 2003

WRITER: Larry B. Dendy, 542-8078; ldendy@uga.edu
CONTACT: Tammy Gilland, 542-0415; tgilland@uga.edu

FAMED SCIENTIST E. O. WILSON TO DELIVER UGA CHARTER LECTURE MARCH 25

ATHENS, Ga. – In his most recent book titled "The Future of Life," famed biologist and naturalist Edward O. Wilson argues that only by preserving the world’s vast diversity of plant and animal life can we ensure the survival of human life.

It’s a message Wilson has long preached as a researcher and writer, and a philosophy that has helped earned him status as one of the world’s foremost living scientists.

But as he notes in the book, it’s a caution still widely unheeded as we continue to witness "the wreckage of a planet by an exuberantly plentiful and ingenious humanity."

On March 25, Wilson – one of only two people ever to receive both the National Medal of Science and the Pulitzer Prize (twice) – will bring his plea for biodiversity preservation to the University of Georgia when he delivers a spring semester Charter Lecture at 4 p.m. in the Chapel. The talk, based on his book and titled "The Future of Life," is open free to the public. The lecture will be broadcast live over UGA’s cable network (channel 15 on Charter cable service).

While at UGA, Wilson will receive the first Lifetime Achievement Medal from UGA’s new Center for Biological Diversity and Ecosystem Processes. The presentation, at a private event following the lecture, will be part of the official opening of the center, which was started last year to focus research on how scientific processes in ecosystems maintain biodiversity.

In research on topics ranging from how animal species spread on tropical islands to how ants communicate with chemical signals, Wilson has been influential in shaping modern scientific notions about evolution, human and animal behavior, natural resource preservation and the controversial field of sociobiology, which he is credited with founding.

Blinded in one eye in a childhood accident, Wilson decided as a teenager to devote his career to studying an organism he could easily capture and see – ants. He used ant populations on South Sea islands as a model to help understand how animal species adapt to habitats. This work led to a larger study of animal population patterns on islands, which resulted in his first book, "The Theory of Island Biogeography," published in 1967.

Ants figured in much of Wilson’s other research, including extensive studies on pheromones, the chemicals ants use to communicate, and social behavior in ant colonies. In 1990, Wilson and German entomologist Bert Holldobler won the Pulitzer Prize for their book "The Ants."

It was Wilson’s second Pulitzer. His first was for his 1978 book "On Human Nature,"
based on his theories about sociobiology, which says that human behavior is primarily genetically based. Despite criticism that sociobiology hints at racial superiority and anti-feminism, Wilson won the 1976 National Medal of Science for his work.

In recent years, Wilson has turned his interest increasingly to the importance of preserving the world’s plant and animal life. In books such as " Biodiversity" and "The Diversity of Life," he argues that humans are endangering the planet by eliminating natural habitats, introducing exotic species and overharvesting plants and animals.

He says humans are destroying species at a faster rate than anytime in history, and predicts that as many as half of all species will disappear by the end of the century if trends aren’t reversed.

In addition to his Pulitzers, Wilson has received more than 90 other prizes and awards from around the world including the Crafoord Prize, presented by the Royal Swedish Academy of Science for areas not covered by the Nobel Prize. He also received Japan’s International Prize for Biology, the National Audubon Society’s Audubon Medal and the Gold Medal of the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

Time magazine named him one of the 25 most influential people in America, and he was ranked in a 1996 international poll as one of the 100 most influential scientists of all time.

He is on the board of directors of The Nature Conservancy, the American Museum of Natural History and Conservation International

A native of Birmingham, Ala., Wilson earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of Alabama. He enrolled in Harvard University in the early 1950s to work on his doctorate and remained there as a faculty member. He is an emeritus professor and honorary curator in entomology for Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology.

The Charter Lecture was started in 1988 to honor the high ideals expressed in the 1785 charter that founded the University of Georgia as the first state-chartered university in America. The series brings to campus speakers who discuss ideas of general importance to a free society.

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