Skip to content
You are not logged in |Login  
     
Limit search to available items
Record:   Prev Next
Resources
More Information
book
BookPrinted Material
Author Wilson, Edward O.

Title Letters to a young scientist / Edward O. Wilson.

Publication Info. New York : Liveright Publishing Corporation, a Division of W.W. Norton & Company, [2013]

Item Status

Location Call No. Status OPAC Message Public Note Gift Note
 Moore Stacks  QH31.W64 A4 2013    Available  ---
Edition First edition.
Description 244 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm
Contents Prologue: You made the right choice -- I. The path to follow. First passion, then training ; Mathematics ; The path to follow -- II. The creative process. What is science? ; The creative process ; What it takes ; Most likely to succeed ; I never changed ; Archetypes of the scientific mind ; Scientists as explorers of the universe -- III. A life in science. A mentor and the start of a career ; The grails of field biology ; A celebration of audacity ; Know your subject, thoroughly -- IV. Theory and the big picture. Science as universal knowledge ; Searching for new worlds on Earth ; The making of theories ; Biological theory on a grand scale ; Theory in the real world -- V. Truth and ethics. The scientific ethic.
Summary "At a time when the survival of our species and the rest of the living world is more than ever linked to our understanding of science, Pulitzer-Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson has distilled sixty years of teaching into a book for students, both young and old alike. Throughout his storied career, Wilson has counseled thousands of talented young people, and as a result has gleaned a deep knowledge, indeed a philosophy, of what one needs to know to have a successful career in science. In Letters to a Young Scientist, he lays out not just his practical advice for how the next generation can succeed, but why it is so vitally important that they do. Wilson threads these twenty letters with richly illustrated autobiographical anecdotes that illuminate his career--both his successes and his failures--and his motivations for becoming a biologist. Beginning with his own coming-of-age in Mobile, Alabama, Wilson reflects on his adolescence as an enthusiastic Boy Scout, resolved to spend as much of his free time as possible outdoors, exploring the swamps and forests of the Gulf Coast and cataloging its many spiders, ants, snakes, and butterflies. Determined at first to reach the rank of Eagle Scout and then later to become an entomologist. Wilson describes an early passion tempered by education as being a guiding force in forging the arc of a career. Letters to a Young Scientist includes advice on choosing a field of study, finding a mentor, and the application of scientific theory in the real world. Yet Wilson insists that success in the sciences does not depend on mathematical skill or even a high IQ, but rather a passion for finding a problem and solving it. He calls more broadly for a synthesis of the sciences and humanities in the twenty-first century that can inspire a generation of young people, encourage their innate creativity, and set them to work solving the problems that previous generations have woefully ignored."--Jacket.
Subject Wilson, Edward O. -- Correspondence.
Wilson, Edward O.
Genre/Form Correspondence.
Subject Biologists -- United States -- Correspondence.
Biologists.
United States.
Naturalists -- United States -- Correspondence.
Naturalists.
Science.
Science.
Genre/Form Records and correspondence.
Personal correspondence.
Personal correspondence.
Added Title Correspondence. Selections https://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n2013018907
ISBN 9780871403773 (hardcover)
0871403773 (hardcover)
Standard No. 40022242215