Wilson, Edward Osborne (1929-2021), was an American biologist known for his contributions to the study of animal societies. Wilson helped found the field of sociobiology, which studies the biological basis for the social behavior of animals. He argued that genes (hereditary material) heavily influence how species behave. Wilson made extensive studies of the social behavior of ants. He observed ant populations worldwide, discovering hundreds of new species. His work with ants also led him to learn how geography, or natural surroundings, plays a role in the formation of species. These and other findings by Wilson helped advance biogeography, the science of the distribution of living things. 
Wilson was born on June 10, 1929, in Birmingham, Alabama. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1955. After spending one year studying ants in the tropics, Wilson joined the faculty at Harvard in 1956, becoming a full professor there in 1964. He then held various teaching and research posts at Harvard and its Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Wilson’s books include Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975), The Diversity of Life (1992), Consilience (1998), The Future of Life (2002), and Genesis: The Deep Origin of Societies (2019). He co-wrote The Theory of Island Biogeography (1967) with the American ecologist Robert H. MacArthur, and The Superorganism (2008) and The Leafcutter Ants (2010) with the German biologist Bert Hölldobler. Wilson also wrote an autobiography, Naturalist (1994), and a novel, Anthill (2010). Two of his works won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction: On Human Nature (1978) and The Ants (1990), which also was written with Holldobler. Wilson died on Dec. 26, 2021.
See also Sociobiology .
