爱德华·威尔逊 （Edward O. Wilson）

美国演化生物学巨擘，“社会生物学”理论之父，生物多样性保护的倡导者。

1947年他进入亚拉巴马大学生物学系，开启蚁类研究之旅，后转入哈佛大学，年仅32岁便获终身教职。

他以杰出科学成就带来20世纪生物学的数次革命，从社会生物学的角度出发，主张动物的思考与活动深受其生物条件制约，人类的社会学行为也可用进化论来分析，从而引发20世纪科学界的震动。

他也努力推进地球生物多样性保护工程，呼吁政府和媒体向物种分类投入更多关注，在他的倡议下，收纳全球物种资料的在线百科全书得以建立。

退休以后，他致力于科学人文写作，将毕生的研究成果和科学事业心得汇入其作品和演讲中，鼓励一代年轻科学家投身生物学领域。《自然》杂志评论他“既是世界级的科学家，也是伟大的写作者。”

译者

王惟芬

台湾大学动物学博士，伦敦帝国理工学院科技医疗史硕士，曾任职于台湾中央研究院动物研究所与生物多样性中心、台湾大学海洋研究所，译有《挑战海洋尽头》《普鲁斯特与乌贼》《左手、右手：探讨不对的起源》《蝴蝶、斑马与胚胎》《抗生素的迷思》《神与史蒂芬霍金：究竟是谁的设计》等十余种书籍。另外他还参与环境资讯电子报、台湾生物多样性资讯网与世界百大入侵物种资料库的编译工作。

Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson imparts the wisdom of his storied career to the next generation.

Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist. At a time in human history when our survival is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. From the collapse of stars to the exploration of rain forests and the oceans’ depths, Wilson instills a love of the innate creativity of science and a respect for the human being’s modest place in the planet’s ecosystem in his readers.