Keynote Speaker Profile:
Natural Resource Stewardship

Dr. Edward O. Wilson
Author and Naturalist

Dr. Edward Wilson, internationally regarded as the preeminent biological theorist of the late 20th century, and certainly one of the great naturalists in American history, earned his bachelor's and master's degrees, both in biology, from the University of Alabama, and earned his Ph.D. in biology from Harvard University.

Wilson's career as an author and novel biological thinker began with his 1967 book, The Theory of Island Biogeography (written with the late ecologist Robert MacArthur), which provided the scientific foundation for all subsequent discussion of the decline of ecosystems. Eight years later, his fifth book, Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, set out the revolutionary theory that human social behaviors, from warfare to altruism, have genetic components.

Wilson is the author, co-author, or editor of 20 other books, among them On Human Nature (1978), which earned him his first Pulitzer Prize; The Diversity of Life (1992), named as one of the outstanding books of the century by the New York Public Library; and Naturalist (1994), cited as one of the best books of the year by The New York Times Book Review. In 1996, Wilson was named one of this nation's 25 most influential people by Time Magazine. In conferring this honor, the magazine noted that Wilson's most enduring influence may be as an "ecological Paul Revere."

Alarmed by the stunning loss of species around the world in our century (Wilson has estimated that we will lose 20 percent of the world's species in the next 23 years), he has become an eloquent and powerful voice decrying the murder of our fellow creatures. "The loss of biodiversity," he has said, "is the folly our descendants are least likely to forgive us."