Edward Osborne Wilson, usually cited as E. O. Wilson, is an American biologist who is widely regarded as the world’s top expert on ants. An influential biological evolution theorist, he has been dubbed “the father of sociobiology,” which is the study of the genetic basis of social behavior of all animals. Since his childhood in Alabama’s countryside, nature and all its species have fascinated Wilson. A fishing accident left him blind in one eye as a young boy, leading him to study insects, which he could view under a microscope, rather than birds and other animals in the field. Wilson earned his doctorate in biology from Harvard University in 1955. In the 1960s, he and the late Robert MacArthur, a community ecologist, developed the influential theory of island biogeography, which posited how life established itself on isolated islands in the middle of the ocean. This theory became the pillar of conservation biology.

Wilson has received more than 150 awards from around the world for both his writing and his scientific research, including two Pulitzer Prizes for General Nonfiction and the Crafoord Prize (conferred by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences to support areas of science not covered by the Nobel Prizes), and he was named one of the century’s 100 leading environmentalists by both Time and Audubon magazine in 2000.