EVENT: Legendary Biologist, Pulitzer Winner E.O. Wilson Addresses USAO
DATE: March 26
 |
Legendary biologist and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson will be the featured speaker during the third annual Emerson-Wier Liberal Arts Symposium March 26 at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
Wilson will address the public during a lecture at 7:30 p.m. in Te Ata Memorial Auditorium in Troutt Hall on the USAO campus.
His presentation is The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. He will also be a part of a panel discussion from 4-6 p.m. in the Davis Hall Amphitheater at USAO. Both events are free and open to the public.
A Harvard professor for 40 years, Wilson has written 20 books, won two Pulitzer Prizes and discovered hundreds of new species.
He is considered by many as the father of the modern environmental movement.
Wilson is currently the Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and continues research at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. He earned his doctorial degree from Harvard and a bachelor’s and master’s degree from the University of Alabama.
With entomologist Bart Holldobler, Wilson wrote what many consider the definitive volume on ants – Ants. The book won the 1991 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction. He also won a Pulitzer in 1979 for On Human Nature.
Wilson’s recent books include Consilience, which draws together the sciences, humanities and the arts into a broad study of human knowledge; The Future of Life, which offers a plan for saving Earth’s biological heritage; From So Simple a Beginning, a collection of the four seminal works of Darwin with new introductions by Wilson, and The Creation, a plea for science and religion to work together to save the planet.
His latest book, The Superorganism, was hailed by the New York Times as “an astonishing account of the intricate and unexpected swarm intelligence of wasps, bees, ants and termites.”
In addition to Wilson, five other presenters will take part in a panel discussion at 4 p.m. in the Davis Hall Amphitheatre at USAO. The panel includes Dr. Robert Frodeman, chair of the Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies at the University of North Texas; Dr. Kenneth Hobson, assistant professor of entomology at the University of Oklahoma; Dr. Edna Manning, current and first president of the Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics; Dr. Keith B. Miller, research assistant professor of geology at Kansas State University, and Joseph Thai, Presidential Professor of Law at the University of Oklahoma School of Law.
USAO’s 2009 Emerson-Wier Liberal Arts Symposium is made possible through a generous gift from the Kirkpatrick Foundation of Oklahoma City. It is sponsored annually by the USAO Foundation and was inspired by endowment funds created by Oklahoma College for Women alumni Gladys Anderson Emerson and Nance Foules Wier.