Wilson published “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis,” a groundbreaking work exploring the genetic and evolutionary roots of animal behavior. Wilson forged collaborations with several prominent scientists, among them mathematician William Bossert and MacArthur, the ecologist, with whom he published his first book, “The Theory of Island Biogeography,” in 1967. Wilson was credited with having identified and described more than 450 new species of ants.ĭuring the 1950s and ’60s, Dr. Among the first field scientists to discover how ant species and others communicated through chemical excretion, Dr. His office at Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology would grow to contain nearly 14,000 species of ants, reportedly the world’s largest collection. Wilson’s only immediate survivor, according to his foundation.ĭuring the 1940s and 1950s, he traveled throughout the Caribbean and South Pacific, studying and collecting numerous ant species. They settled in Lexington and had one child, Catherine, a professor of philosophy. That same year, he married Irene Kelley, a poet. Wilson entered the University of Alabama, picking up two degrees before going to Harvard University, where he earned a PhD in 1955. He began corresponding with Marion Smith of Washington’s National Museum of Natural History, who encouraged his study of ants, a field known as myrmecology.Īfter attending from Gulf Coast Military Academy, Dr. are prone to undervalue the mental growth that occurs during daydreaming and aimless wandering,” he later wrote. In Washington, D.C., where his father worked for the Rural Electrification Administration, Sonny spent hours collecting bug and butterfly specimens in a nearby park. “I would thereafter celebrate the little things of the world.”Ī lifelong love affair with nature - ant species in particular - soon began. “The attention of my surviving eye turned to the ground,” he recalled.
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