I reviewed his book Letters to a Young Scientist in 2013, in fact he wrote so much that back when I was doing more book reviews I reviewed no less than 3 of his books.
Here is his advice in a nutshell from Letters to a Young Scientist, slightly oversimplified:
1. Scientist; “The world needs you, badly”, push, pull, do all that you can do to keep doing the best, most interesting science that you can do.
2. The most interesting science is original science.
3. You will make mistakes; try not to make big ones.
EO Wilson had a life filled with great science and great writing.
He is probably most famous among ecologist for work he did just a little bit ago (1967), when he and Robert MacArthur proposed the theory of island biogeography. A staple of ecology these days.
As the world’s most preeminent expert on ants, he has described 418 new species, the first in 1950.
Quotes by EO Wilson:
On Religion:
“Faith is the one thing that makes otherwise good people do bad things”
“We ought to recognize that religious strife is not the consequence of differences among people. It’s about conflicts between creation stories.”
On Conservation:
“The history of conservation is a story of many victories in a losing war”
“Destroying rainforest fo economic gain is like burning a Renaissance painting to cook a meal”
The E.O. Wilson Biodiversity foundation webpage is graced by this quote “The sixth great extinction … is upon us, grace of mankind. Earth has at last acquired a force that can break the crucible of biodiversity.”
A few more:
“Political Ideology can corrupt the mind, and science”
“The real problem with humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology”
“Every kid has a bug period, I never grew out of mine”
“Sometimes a concept is baffling not because it is profound but because it is wrong.”
“Perhaps the time has come to cease calling it the environmentalist view, as though it were a lobbying effort outside of the mainstream if human activity, and to start calling it the real-world view”
Books by EO Wilson that you should read.
The Diversity of Life. 1992.
Naturalist. 1994
Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. 1998
The Future of Life. 2002
The Creation: An Appeal to Save Life on Earth. 2006
Half-Earth: Our planets fight for life. 2016
“Quietly they go, the intelligent, the witty, the brave.
I know. But I do not approve. And I am not resigned.”