By Maggie Romuld

The UN has declared next year the International Year of Biodiversity and there is probably no one more pleased than Dr. Edward O. Wilson. In 1988, Dr. Wilson edited a book entitled BioDiversity, based on the proceedings of the first American National Conference on the subject. By introducing the term biodiversity to the public and influencing the creation of biodiversity as a legitimate discipline of scientific enquiry, Dr. Wilson became known as the "father" of biodiversity.

When people speak of Dr. Wilson they describe him as an original thinker, a genius, a guru, an "intellectual hero", one of the "greatest thinkers of the 20th century" or "Darwin's heir", and they are not wrong. In his prolific career Dr. Wilson has received over 100 of the most prestigious scientific, conservation and writing awards from around the world, including two Pulitzer Prizes for Nonfiction. In the last 15 years, Dr. Wilson has also been named one of the 25 most influential Americans by Time Magazine, one of the century's 100 leading environmentalists by both Time and Audubon Magazine, and one of the world's leading intellectuals.

If you read the list of research projects he has been involved with or listen to him speak, in his gentle yet passionate way, it is easy to believe that Dr. Wilson was born 80 years ago: a younger man could not have accomplished as much or speak with such conviction. When he first joined the Harvard faculty 53 years ago (now a Pellegrino University Professor Emeritus and Honorary Curator in Entomology), he conducted work on the classification and ecology of ants in the South Pacific and the American tropics. He initially achieved recognition for his ground-breaking theories of socio-biology from his studies of ants, but he is equally famous for developing the theory of island biogeography, with the late Robert H. MacArthur, which greatly influenced the discipline of ecology and modern conservation biology. When Dr. Wilson became actively involved in global conservation and published Biophilia, which explored humanity's attraction to the natural environment, and then followed that with the equally influential Diversity of Life, in 1992, and The Future of Life, in 2002, he cemented his role as a leader in the biodiversity field as well.

The list of Dr. Wilson's current activities belies his age. He continues to give presentations at universities and conferences to share his concern with human-induced environmental degradation and loss of biodiversity. He also continues to consult with environmental organizations and write and edit - his most recent book, The Superorgainsm (co-authored with Bert Holldobler) was published this year. He is still actively committed to protecting biodiversity, recently suggesting that we need a new agency "along the lines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)," but which deals directly with stemming biodiversity loss, and he has been working on a joint proposal with Simon Stuart, head of the Species Survival Commission at the IUCN to facilitate the creation of that organization. Another immense project that he is involved with is the Encyclopedia of Life (EoL). In 2003, he suggested setting up an electronic encyclopedia to register everything known about the approximately 1.8 million identified species on Earth and in February 2008, the EoL went online.

It is impossible to do justice to Dr. Wilson's six decade career in a brief profile - the list of his publications is too long, his contribution to science deep and wide. And while there is no doubt he is a brilliant and fascinating man, some of his ideas have spawned controversy - he's been called a racist, and he once, famously, had water poured over his head at a lecture. But read his books, listen to his lectures or visit the websites that are dedicated to him and his causes - you may become an E.O. Wilson groupie.