Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist and author. He was an entomologist who studied ants, but to the public he is known for sociobiology, biodiversity and conservation.
Wilson's writing has been very influential. He was a two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize for general non-fiction. He was known for his role as "the father of sociobiology", his environmentalism, and his secular humanist and deist ideas on religion and ethics.
He worked at Harvard University, and was a Fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He was a Humanist Laureate of the International Academy of Humanism. He was awarded the National Medal of Science (1977), and the Crafoord Prize (1990), which recognizes research in scientific fields not eligible for the Nobel Prize.