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Edward Osborne Wilson Jr., Harvard University professor and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, will deliver the spring Commencement address at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Edward Osborne Wilson Jr., Harvard University professor and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, will deliver the spring Commencement address at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Chancellor Holden Thorp will preside at the ceremony on May 8, 2011, at 9:30 a.m. in Kenan Stadium.

“Ed’s work in entomology and ecology made biodiversity an important topic,” Thorp said. “He has inspired countless young people to learn more about humans, other species and the fragile, complex relationship that links all of us with this planet.”

Thorp chose Wilson in consultation with the University’s Commencement Speaker Selection Committee, which is made up of an equal number of students and faculty. Wilson is the Pellegrino University Research Professor in Entomology for the department of organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University.

Wilson’s works on entomology are significant in the scientific community, and he has written extensively on sociobiology and biodiversity. In the tradition of Rachel Carson, founder of contemporary environmental movement, Wilson bridges the gap between science and the humanities, making science accessible to the general public and presenting the case for conservation of the natural world.

An Alabama native, Wilson began his career studying ants in the South Pacific and the southern United States, using what he learned from these tiny creatures to formulate theories that have become cornerstones of the study of conservation biology and sociobiology. The application of his knowledge of insect behavior to the origins of human nature in “Sociobiology: The New Synthesis” stirred bitter controversy on the role of biology in human behavior in 1975. Wilson took on his critics with a further exploration of the science behind his theories in “On Human Nature,” a widely acclaimed text that gave Wilson his first Pulitzer. He received his second for “The Ants,” with , in 1991. Wilson has also been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship (1975), the National Medal of Science (1977) and the Crafoord Prize (1990), which recognizes researchers in scientific fields not eligible for the Nobel Prize.

More recently, Wilson of Lexington, Mass., has focused on issues of the environment and biodiversity, agreeing to lend his name to a nonprofit foundation created in 2005 to preserve biological diversity in the living environment by inventing and implementing business and educational strategies in the service of conservation. The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation’s embrace of the full range of approaches to biodiversity – from hands-on engagement with the natural world to modern biotechnology – reflects Wilson's own journey from boyhood exploration of Alabama's wildlands to a career at the forefront of science at Harvard University.

Photo: http://152.2.194.2/netpub/server.np?find&site=Luminosity&catalog=catalog&template=view.np&field=itemid&op=matches&value=9833

Contact:  Mike McFarland, (919) 962-8592, mike_mcfarland@unc.edu

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