Letters to a Young Scientist (2013)

Author Talk by Edward O. Wilson

Harvard Book Store and the Harvard Museum of Natural History welcomed Pulitzer Prize–winning biologist Edward O. Wilson for a discussion of his new book, Letters to a Young Scientist. Inspired by Rainer Maria Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, young and old. Reflecting on his coming-of-age in the South as a Boy Scout and a lover of ants and butterflies, Wilson threads these twenty-one letters, each richly illustrated, with autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career—both his successes and his failures—and his motivations for becoming a biologist.