Renowned biologist and one of the greatest living scientists, Edward O. Wilson, will speak at the University of Wyoming in September.
It's a chance, UW Professor Richard Machalek says, that's a rare opportunity. Wilson will speak at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 23, in the A&S auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.
"For those among us who have wondered what it might have been like to see in action a mind like that of Charles Darwin, the forthcoming opportunity to hear a lecture by E. O. Wilson is probably about as close as we can hope to come," Machalek says.
Wilson's title, the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, tells only part of his story. Considered to be the father of sociobiology, Wilson has made a life's work in the study of ants, but that work also includes a study of social behavior and the interconnectedness of life on Earth.
A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner for General Non-Fiction, Wilson has been honored with the Crafoord Prize, which the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences awards in sciences not covered by the Nobel Prize. He's also been named one of Time magazine's America's 25 Most Influential People.
"It's a rare and enviable privilege by being able to attend a public lecture by a scientist and thinker of E. O. Wilson's stature," Machalek says. "Wilson's contributions to human knowledge fill the pages of at least two dozen books and hundreds of scientific and scholarly articles, and they encompass a stunning array of topics, ranging from animal behavior, evolutionary biology, ecology, global environmental issues, the biological foundations of human nature, to reflections on the foundations and nature of human knowledge itself."
