American historian and author Richard Rhodes wrote the award winning book 'The Making of the Atomic Bomb' and later published 'Energy: A Human History.' Now Rhodes has branched out to biography again with this book about Edward Osborne Wilson (known as E.O. Wilson), a world-renowned American biologist, naturalist, and writer.
E.O. Wilson
Ever since I studied wasp taxonomy in graduate school, I've greatly admired the great ant taxonomist (among other things) E. O. Wilson. So I was happy to read this narrative about the famous scientist's life and work.
E.O. Wilson examining ants in the laboratory
E.O. Wilson observing ants in nature
For a deep dive into Wilson's scientific achievements, you'd have to read his books and articles. But if you just want to learn a bit about Wilson as a person - and get an overview of his contributions to science - this book, which is filled with fun personal details, is a good place to start.
E.O. Wilson, born in 1929, became interested in insects - especially ants - as a child. Despite being accidently blinded in one eye at age seven, Wilson was a seasoned researcher by his teens. Rhodes writes, "In a vacant lot in Mobile, Alabama, when Wilson was only 13 years old, he'd been the first collector in the United States to spot the invasion of the pestilential red imported fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, transported from Argentina as a ship stowaway." So the great biologist was off to a good start!
Solenopsis invicta (red fire ant)
Teenage Eagle Scout E.O. Wilson was well on his way to becoming a scientist
Later, in Wilson's second year as a junior fellow at Harvard in the early 1950s, the biologist was invited to collect ants in the South Pacific for the Harvard Museum. During Wilson's trip he discovered many new ant species, demonstrating he was both far-seeing and lucky. Wilson noted, "At the time I entered college only about a dozen scientists around the world were engaged full-time in the study of ants. I had struck gold before the rush began. Almost every research project I began thereafter, no matter how unsophisticated (and all were unsophisticated) yielded discoveries publishable in scientific journals."
Rhodes provides a detailed description of Wilson's South Pacific ant collecting trip, during which the scientist gathered at least 1,000 species. In addition, Rhodes enlivens the narrative with snippets from Wilson's letters to his fiancée Irene. For example, about arriving in Fiji, Wilson wrote, "Never before or afterward in my life have I felt such a surge of high expectation - of pure exhilaration - as in those few minutes. I carried no high-technology instruments, only a hand lens, forceps, specimen vials, notebooks, quinine, sulfanilamide, youth desire, and unbounded hope."
Fiji rain forest
Insect collecting kit
And from natives on Fiji, Wilson learned the island's historic cannibals thought "human flesh was salty, not as tasty as pig."
Staged photo of cannibal feast
When Christmas rolled around, Wilson was in New Caledonia (a French collective) and Santa Claus was supposed to arrive by French submarine, but could only muster an old tugboat. Santa was greeted anyway by a crowd of more than a thousand people, "including many children and fascinated New Caledonian natives and Indochinese and Malayans."
In some traditions, Santa Claus arrives by boat
Later, on the island of Espiritu Santo Wilson marveled at the rainforest, with giant trees, gorgeous little parrots and pigeons, and flying foxes (giant fruit-eating bats) - considered a delicacy. When Wilson later tried eating flying fox he found it "gamy, tasting just about what you'd expect from bat meat" and could only swallow a few bites.
Espiritu Santo rain forest
Flying fox (giant fruit bat)
Flying fox is a delicacy in the South Pacific
Afterwards, in Australia, Wilson marveled, "What a country! Hundreds and hundreds of miles of rough little roads and byways without a habitation along them or even an advertising sign now and then, just tens of thousands of square miles of eucalypt forest and sandplain.
Australian outback
From Australia Wilson headed to New Guinea, "one of the last and greatest strongholds of stone-age man and the primeval forest and my premier destination on this trip." Wilson told Irene he expected the fieldwork in New Guinea to be "the most exciting of my life." And indeed it was. Among the more than 50 species of ants collected in New Guinea, Wilson found species that lived in silk bags hung from trees and army ant colonies with hundreds of thousands of workers. On the downside, there were "endless, enormous, aggressive, consuming hordes of mosquitoes that are after you every minute of the day."
Some ants from New Guinea
Wilson was attacked by hordes of mosquitoes in New Guinea
After more stops, Wilson returned to America, and later noted, "Finally, clad in khaki and heavy boots, crew-cut, twenty pounds underweight, and tinted faint yellow from the antimalarial drug quinacrine, I fell into [my fiancée] Renee's arms."
As a biologist who'd seen diverse fauna everywhere, Wilson was interested in the evolution of animals. In 1859, Charles Darwin proposed that biological evolution occurs as a result of natural selection, which is the idea that in any given generation, some individuals - who are slightly better adapted - are more likely to survive and reproduce than others.
We now know that these 'better adaptations' are controlled by DNA (genes), whose structure was described by James Watson and Francis Crick in 1953.
James Watson (left) and Francis Crick with their model of DNA
Wilson wanted to study the kinds of processes that create biodiversity, and much of his work involved field studies like those he did in the South Pacific. Ironically, this put Wilson at odds with his fellow Harvard professor, DNA describer James Watson, who believed biology could be best pursued in the lab.
James Watson
At one point, Wilson wrote, "I found [Watson] the most unpleasant human being I had ever met....At twenty-eight, he was only a year older. He arrived with a conviction that biology must be transformed into a science directed at molecules and cells and rewritten in the language of physics and chemistry...His bad manners were tolerated because of the greatness of the discovery he had made." Rhodes writes a good deal about the epic rivalry between Wilson and Watson, which resulted in the division of biological studies at Harvard into the separate departments of molecular biology and evolutionary biology.
SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT SPOILER ALERT
Wilson and Watson later became friends.
END SPOILER ALERT END SPOILER ALERT
Rhodes describes Wilson's collaboration with other scientists and mathematicians; Wilson's studies of ant pheromones; Wilson's studies of populations and biogeography; Wilson's experiments related to repopulating denuded islands; Wilson's theories about altruistic behavior (sacrificing oneself so relatives with shared genes survive); Wilson's expansion into vertebrate biology; the brouhaha surrounding Wilson's publication of the book Sociobiology (this section is a humdinger!); Wilson's interest in hereditary influence on human behavior (also very controversial); Wilson's drive to catalogue ALL species on the planet; Wilson's efforts to conserve/restore natural habitats so species are protected; Wilson's books and other publications; and more.
Wilson's book Sociobiology resulted in backlash from some researchers
Perhaps appealing to human self-interest (if not love of nature), Wilson pleads for preserving species because, "Only a tiny fraction of species with potential economic importance has been used....A far larger number, tens of thousands of plants and millions of animals, have never even been studied well enough to assess their potential."
Wilson also developed theories about the evolution of social insects (like ants, bees and wasps) and describes some of their more dramatic behavior. Writing about the relentless sweep of Eciton burchelli (army ants) across a lowland forest in South America, Wilson wrote "they are a big conspicuous species that link themselves together around their mother queen in chains and nets that accumulate layer upon interlocking layer until finally the entire worker force - as many as 700,000 individuals - comprises a solid mass." Another ant specialist observed about an army ant horde, "For an Eciton burchelli raid nearing the height of its development in swarming, picture a rectangular body of 15 meters or more in width and 1 to 2 meters in depth, made of of many tens of thousands of scurrying reddish-black individuals....[which] bring disaster to practically all animal life that lies in their path and fails to escape."
Swarm of army ants
When Wilson retired from Harvard in 1996, he wanted to devote most of his time to his first love, the study of ants, and he continued to add to the field of myrmecology.
E.O. Wilson continued to study ants after retiring from Harvard
Ant collection
Wilson also continued his other work, and in 2014 the E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Laboratory was opened in Mozambique. The facility offers long-term research and training in biodiversity documentation, ecology, and conservation biology to visiting researchers from both Mozambique and abroad.
E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Laboratory opens in Mozambique
Wilson has a good sense of humor as well. Asked "What do I do about the ants in my kitchen?" Wilson (half-seriously) replied, "Watch where you step. Be careful of the little lives. Feed them crumbs of coffeecake. They also like bit of tuna and whipped cream. Get a magnifying glass. Watch them closely. And you will be as close to any person may ever come to seeing social life as it might evolve on another planet."
In addition to being a great scientist, Wilson is a loving husband and father to his wife Irene and daughter Catherine. Now in his nineties, Wilson is still working and adding to his admirable legacy.
E.O. Wilson sitting in front of an anthill
I enjoyed the book and highly recommend it to readers interested in E.O. Wilson.
Thanks to Netgalley, Richard Rhodes, and Doubleday for a copy of the book.
Rating: 4 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment