‘Ant Man’s’ Views on Insect World, Human Nature Have Many Buzzing : Science: The entomologist’s theories and writing have brought acclaim. The world of bugs, he says, is a ‘treasure house’ of promise that could improve conditions of life on earth.

Edward O. Wilson wrote a big book about ants and a small book about human nature, and he won the Pulitzer Prize for both.

He worked for decades as a myrmecologist, or ant doctor, one of only about 100 in the world, but he broadened his theories to a way of looking at life that has affected thousands of scientists in dozens of disciplines.

He has long spent his days kicking around with a handful of colleagues the idiosyncrasies of Myrmica rubra and Polyergus lucidus and others among the 8,800 ant species, but he is a polished writer and dazzling speaker in any crowd.

Wilson is the toast of Harvard University Press along with co-author Bert Holldobler for “The Ants,” the first full catalogue in 80 years on one of the most diverse and complex life forms on Earth.

And, typical of the vicissitude of Wilson’s career, the book not only won this year’s Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction, but it is popular--an extraordinary exacta for a university press book.

“The Ants” is expensive, $85, but of incalculable value as a shared wonder in science, accessible and entertaining and certain to enrich readers of all ages and all levels of interest.

It is also a consummation of a life in natural science that, like so much of Edward Wilson’s meanderings, ended up far from the way it appeared it might.

It began inauspiciously at the age of 7 when Wilson was reeling in a fish too vigorously and a fin struck him in the face. It caused a traumatic cataract that left him blind in one eye and might have understandably turned him off to the ways of nature.

But Wilson, now 62, says it only helped him focus better, especially on insects. And soon he knew he wanted to be an entomologist.

“Most kids go through a bug phase. I just never grew out of mine,” he said.

Indeed, when talking or writing about ants, Wilson is both bookish and boyish, an effective teaching combination which has made him one of Harvard’s most popular professors.

During a recent visit to his expansive laboratory and office, the awe of sudden discovery came over him as he directed attention to a box of leaf-cutter ants and extolled them as a colony that “can reach 2 million and more. They dig tunnels 20 feet down, moving more than 40,000 pounds of soil to make their nests. It is the Great Wall of China, from an ant’s point of view.”

Then he pointed out the large, muscular--for ants--soldiers.

“They live to fight, and they are well-equipped for it. They are the Arnold Schwarzeneggers of the colony.”

He exhaled into one of the clear plastic tunnels set for the colony: “This will bring out the soldiers. They don’t like changes in currents.”

Sure enough, they began to march, some of them strutting out from the tubes into an open area, anxious and combat-ready.

It is an example of the altruism of ants, the aspect of their lives that most fascinates Wilson: thousands upon thousands of them in a colony, workers or warriors, all related and all living and dying willingly to serve the queen.

Wilson’s fascination with natural history flourished when his family moved from Alabama to Washington, opening up what he calls the “world of Oz” of the museums and the National Zoo. Then he read a National Geographic article on ants by William Mann, director of the zoo, and he was forever fixed on bug life.

By 1945, he was thinking about studying flies, but soon there came a Wilsonian twist. The pins used to hold the fly specimens were made only in Czechoslovakia, and World War II had halted production. So he turned to ants.

He was one of only 20 myrmecologists in the world then and got what he calls “tutorial attention” at the University of Alabama, from which he was graduated at the age of 20.

Wilson then landed a job studying the vicious, biting fire ants around his hometown of Mobile, Ala. The ants had slipped off a South American ship and have since spread as far as the Carolinas and Texas.

He went on to get a doctorate from Harvard and then a teaching position there. In the meantime, he met Mann, who soon gave him his entire library on ants.

He began what appeared to be a career of pensive and somewhat obscure study. Then . . .

He won his first Pulitzer in general nonfiction in 1979 for “On Human Nature,” the culmination of a period during which this guileless man created a firestorm of protest with his book “Sociobiology.”

His book was an analysis of the social behavior of ants that led him to postulate that genetics plays a role not only in animal evolution but also in man.

Liberals everywhere were up in arms, claiming the notion--it was called “genetic determinism”--meant that man couldn’t improve himself. Wilson, a quiet, studious entomologist, had become a target of the political left.

Talk of that period invariably brings up the story of his dousing by a protester during a speech in Washington.

“Yes, one overwrought woman poured water from a pitcher over my head. I said to myself at the time that this is silly, but I bet that’s what they’ll talk about 20 years from now. Like Nancy (Reagan’s) designer dress.”

His ideas on social biology are now widely accepted, and he has an entire shelf of books filled with variations on his theme. Many of those books have never been opened; he simply cannot keep up with all the offshoots of the field he fathered.

He is still, as few headline writers have been able to resist calling him, “the Ant Man,” indefatigable in his work and his enthusiasm.

Wilson, for example, had recently returned from one of many trips to Costa Rica to study ants there when he spotted two warring colonies on a sidewalk outside his office. He had to stop.

“It’s always fascinating. It’s real Greco-Roman style, hand-to-hand combat. . . . No, I didn’t watch too long. One has to be careful about getting down on his hands and knees and crawling around Harvard,” he said.

Wilson looks at the vast world of insects as a “treasure house” full of promise. Knowing an exact type of mosquito “could mean eliminating a tropical disease.” Knowing a type of wasp “could give a clue that could save part of a corn crop.” Knowing a moth or aphid in the rain forest “could lead to discovery of chemicals useful in nerve regenerative therapy.”

“Entomology must always have as its central concern the great diversity of insects. Why are they so unconscionably diverse? We don’t know today, there may be 10 million (types of) insects, maybe 100 million. We only have names on 750,000 species.”

Believing in such prospects causes him not a little dismay that so much is spent on exploring space and so little on the world around us. But he counts himself lucky to be a scientist.

“I think there are basically two types of scientists: those who go into science in order to be successful, and those who try to become successful so they can stay in science. I like to think I’m in the latter group.”