Record

Authorised form of nameWilson; Edward Osborne (1929-2021); biologist and myrmecologist
Dates1929-2021
NationalityAmerican
Place of birthBirmingham, Alabama, USA
Date of birth10 June 1929
Place of deathBurlington, Massachusetts, USA
Date of death26 December 2021
Research fieldEvolution
Sociobiology
Biogeography
Entomology
Ecology
Natural history
Biology
ActivityEducation: University of Alabama (B.S 1949; M.S 1950); Harvard University (PhD 1955)
Career:
Raised in Southern US; blinded himself in his right eye in a fishing accident (1936); member of Harvard’s biology and zoology faculties (1956-1976); Frank B. Baird Professor of Science (1976-94); Mellon Professor of the Sciences (1990-93); and Pellegrino University Professor (1994-97; professor emeritus from 1997); curator in entomology at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (1973-97).
Awards/Medals:
United States National Medal of Science 1977
Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction 1979
Tyler E. Prize in Ecology 1984
Memberships:
U.S. National Academy of Science
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Philosophical Society
The German Academy of Sciences
Honorary Life Membership of the American Genetic Association 1981
British Ecological Society 1983
Membership categoryForeign Member
Date of election28/06/1990
Age at election61
RelationshipsParents: Inez Linnette Freeman and Edward Osborne Wilson Sr.
Spouse: Irene Kelley ​(m. 1955) (d 7 August 2021).
Children: Catherine I. Gargill.
OtherInfoForemost authority on the social behaviour of insects and a founder of the theory of island biogeography and the subdiscipline of socio-biology
World's leading authority on ants. His work on classification of ants resulted in revisions of much of the Pacific fauna, and his field work in Melanesia and Asia led him to an interest in biogeography and species formation. He he traced the evolution of ant castes by alteration of allometric curves and applied linear programming models to the "ergonomics" of caste systems in social insects generally.
SourceEncyclopedia Britannica, E. O. Wilson [URL: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edward-O-Wilson; last accessed: 06/03/2026]
National Library of Medicine, Edward Osborne Wilson, Naturalist (1929–2021), [URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8812546/; last accessed: 06/03/2026]
Wikipedia, E. O. Wilson, [URL: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson; last accessed: 06/03/2026]
Edward Osborne Wilson obituary [URL: https://officeofthesecretary.fas.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum2291/files/2024-11/Wilson%20Memorial%20Minute_2023_05_02.pdf; last accessed: 06/03/2026]
CodeNA3882
Archives associated with this Fellow
RefNoTitleDate
IM/004958Wilson, Edward Osborne1991
EC/1990/46Wilson, Edward Osborne: certificate of election to the Royal Society1984
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