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RELEASE ON RECEIPT
October 27, 1998
Pulitzer-Prize Winning Scientist and Author Edward O. Wilson to Speak at Oberlin College
Media Contact: Marci Janas
Free Public Events for Friday, Nov. 6:
• Noon:
Mead-Swing Lecture "Consilience: The Relation Between
Science and the Humanities"
Finney Chapel
(corner of Professor and Lorain streets)
• 4:35 p.m.
Informal discussion with faculty & students
Kettering Hall of Science, Rm. 11
(130 W. Lorain St.)
Free Public Events for
Saturday, Nov. 7:
• 10:30 a.m.
Book Signing
Co-op Bookstore
(37 W. College St.)
• 8 p.m.
Slide Talk "The Diversity of Life"
Root Room, Carnegie Building
(corner of Professor and Lorain streets)
For more information call Sandy Kolek, Oberlin College Main Library: 440/775-8285 ext.234
OBERLIN, OH--Edward O. Wilson, considered one of the most important scientists of all time, will deliver two lectures at Oberlin College on Friday, Nov. 6 and Saturday, Nov. 7.
Wilson, the Pelligrino University Research Professor at Harvard University, has made major contributions to numerous areas of scientific inquiry, including entomology, the understanding of ecosystems, the importance of biodiversity, and the effect of evolution and natural selection on human nature. He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction--for On Human Nature in 1979, and, in 1991, for The Ants. Time magazine named Wilson one of America's 25 most influential people in 1996.
Wilson began his career as an entomologist. His early research, demonstrating that ants communicate through the discharge of chemicals called pheromones, opened a new area of bio-chemical study.
Wilson's other groundbreaking books include Sociobiology: The New Synthesis, The Diversity of Life and Consilience, a New York Times bestseller published this year by Knopf.
In Sociobiology, a finalist for the National Book Award, Wilson argues that many social behaviors--altruism, aggression, sexuality and religious experience, for example--have a genetic base. This view occasioned wide-spread controversy and debate, and led to a variety of new scientific studies of the potential genetic component in human behaviors.
In his newest book, Wilson argues for the fundamental unity of all knowledge and the need to search for what he calls "consilience"--proof that everything in our world is organized by a small number of fundamental natural laws.
Wilson's visit to Oberlin is sponsored by the Friends of the Library, the Mead-Swing Lectureship, the President's Office, and the Biology Department.
