Farewell to Edward O. Wilson, "the Darwin of the modern age"

• Ecohéroes The father of biodiversity

Edward O. Wilson kept in his office the largest collection of ants in the world: no less than a million specimens of this animal that fascinated him so much, and which, like many other insects, he investigated in depth since he began to collect them. If Charles Darwin has had a successor, it has been Wilson, a true expert on the natural world. The famous American ecologist who popularized the term biodiversity and did so much to educate society about its value, died on Sunday at the age of 92 at his home in Burlington, Massachusetts, as reported by the foundation that bears his name.

During the 70 years that he worked at Harvard as a professor, entomologist and curator of the collection of the Museum of Comparative Zoology of that same university, he discovered more than 400 species of ants but his greatest achievement in this field according to him was discovering how ants communicate to others that there is danger and where there is food emitting chemical substances.

was precisely one of his two works awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Literature, in 1991 (he also received it for

in

1979)

Among the thirty books that he wrote also stand out

,

or the controversial

, to which are added almost half a thousand scientific articles published in the most prestigious journals.

Sociobiology: the New Synthesis "

Born in Alabama, the Harvard University professor emeritus shared a generation and mission with the 95-year-old British naturalist David Attenborough.

Both have dedicated a lot of time and effort in recent years to alert about the rapid degradation that many ecosystems are suffering and that they have witnessed during the last century.

Wilson launched a project dubbed the Half-Earth Project to claim that half of the land and sea surface be protected with the aim of reversing the rapid rate at which many species are becoming extinct and which, according to scientists, is the fastest in the last 10 million years. The United Nations has asked the international community to commit to conserving 30% of the land and sea surface (twice the surface that is currently protected) by the year 2030, a target known as 30 in 30, and which has been partially inspired by Wilson.

He received the National Medal of Science, the highest award for a scientist in the United States, and the Royal Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel, awarded him the Crafoord Prize, a prize that covers areas not awarded by the Nobel.

In 1996 an international survey included him in the list of the 100 most influential scientists in history.

He has won more than a hundred awards throughout his career, including the 2010 BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award in the category of Conservation Ecology and Biology.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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