E . O .

W i l s o n ’s L i f e o n E a r t h
Digital biology textbook
Board of Advisors E. O. Wilson’s Life on Earth is a multimedia biology textbook being
Eric Chivian developed by the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation. Life on
Director of the Center for Health and the Global Earth will give students at all educational levels and all learning
Environment, Harvard Medical School,
Nobel Peace Prize, 1985 styles, everywhere in the world, a customizable and
Gretchen Daily comprehensive set of digital modules covering all of the central
Director, Center for Conservation Biology, topics of biology.
Stanford University
Harrison Ford
Actor and conservationist Who are we?
Eric R. Kandel We are teachers, scientists, media designers, and textbook
University Professor, Columbia University, professionals. We have gathered around the great biologist E. O.
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2000
Wilson in pursuit of a collective vision: to demonstrate what is
Amory Lovins
Co-CEO, Rocky Mountains Institute possible when an ambitious, ultra-high-tech creative team uses every
Gregory T. Lucier advanced tool available to transform biology instruction.
Chairman and CEO
Life Technologies Corporation Our animators are PhD scientists who have mastered the same
Sir Paul Nurse special effects software that Hollywood uses to create epics like Lord
President, Rockefeller University, of the Rings. Our team uses these tools to create award-winning
Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, 2001
scientific visualizations and instructional media materials.
Neil Patterson
Chairman and CEO
Our content development team, led by E. O. Wilson, includes many
E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation
Steven Pinker of the world’s greatest scientists working with two professional
Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard textbook developers who will be working fulltime on the project for 30
University months. Nobel prize winners who have contributed or are signed up
Peter H. Raven to serve as the patron scientist of book sections include Paul Nurse,
Director, Missouri Botanical Garden
Eric Kandel, Jim Watson, and Christian de Duve. Keep an eye on our
Larry G. Rosenstock
CEO, High Tech High contributor’s roster as the project develops.
Jeffrey Sachs
Director, Earth Institute, Columbia University, What is E. O. Wilson’s Life on Earth?
Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General
We describe Life on Earth as a digital textbook so people will
Daniel Schrag
Director, Harvard University Center for the understand what our role will be in classrooms. More precisely, we
Environment are the instructional platform that will replace biology textbooks. Life
Holden Thorp on Earth is newly conceived content, hosted in a custom content
Chancellor, University of North Carolina
management system (CMS) that drives content delivery to all
James D. Watson devices. (We are device agnostic; our materials will be available on all
Chancellor Emeritus, Cold Spring Harbor
Laboratory, Nobel Prize in Physiology or platforms in the form of html and mobile device apps.) In addition to
Medicine, 1962 content delivery, the Life on Earth CMS offers educator-driven
Charles J. Smith curriculum customization, student scheduling, compliance tracking,
Entrepreneur, Co-founder of Digital Stock,
nForma, Redwing Media and Carbella and assessment. All materials will be published in SCORM-compliant
Edward O. Wilson formats for friction-free deployment within proprietary content-
Pellegrino University Research Professor management systems.
Emeritus, Harvard University
Our target includes students in both high school and college. We believe that most adopters will learn what
we have learned, that the partitioning of biology lessons between high school and college is now artificial.
When we develop an animated presentation of the molecular mechanism of photosynthesis, we use the real
protein structures; we put them through their paces using actual mechanisms when known; we portray
actual pathways and mechanisms. Of course we will offer lessons tuned to different levels of understanding
in life science and chemistry. But the greatest part of our work will be visual, dynamic and interactive, and
intellectually accessible to all students.

The subject material in Life on Earth generally aligns closely with the textbook content users have learned to
expect. We intend to integrate with relative ease into existing courses and meet all prevailing curriculum
standards. At the same time, we are reconsidering the biology course from scratch to produce a completely
modern instructional tool. Each topic will be presented in the format that best serves the goal of effective
information transfer. Some molecular concepts are best shown in cinematic 3D. For others, a simple diagram
cannot be improved upon. Concepts of population dynamics will be presented in a complex simulation with
user adjustable parameters; the underlying lessons of the simulation will be explained in video vignettes by
Ed Wilson. We are weighing every topic students are expected to learn in an introductory biology course and
devising the best way to present that topic. At its current state of development, the complete course is
broken down into 7 units, consisting of 62 topics, which are supported by 204 interactive modules. As class
testing proceeds and user response is collected, the outline will continue to be refined and expanded.

How much will Life on Earth cost?

We are committed to a concept we call endowed content. We would like to give Life on Earth for free to
every student on earth as part of their biological inheritance. At the same time, the reality of high-end content
development requires that we work within a funding scheme that is workable over many years. In the early
stages of the project we have been sustained by the generous support of Life Technologies Foundation,
Gordon and Betty Moore, and other private and corporate funders. Over the long term, we need to be able
to develop a stable source of revenue. We are busily engaged with a number of stakeholders in science
education to work out the details of our long-term viability. Initial development of Life on Earth will cost $8.5
million. Continuing costs will be approximately $1.5 million per year, including continuing development,
maintenance, and bandwidth expenses. In all, we will require continuing annual support equivalent to the
budget of a very small municipal museum, yet we expect to deliver value on another scale altogether.
Another way to look at it: Once established, we should be able to deliver our content on a sustainable basis
for just a couple of dollars per user. If we can assemble the funding structure that lets us deliver biology
education to students at that price range, we will have achieved our goal of endowed content.

When will Life on Earth be in the hands of students?

Our goal is to make our materials available to instructors in stages over the next 3 to 4 years. As coherent
instructional units are developed, we will be delivering them to instructors and collecting feedback. By the
time Life on Earth is complete, we expect that it will already be in use to some degree in most biology
classrooms. Our goal is to deliver a complete biology curriculum by early summer 2014 for adoption in Fall
classrooms.
E. O. Wilson Life on Earth Team

Edward O. Wilson Project Leader

E. O. Wilson, Pellegrino University Research Professor Emeritus at Harvard, is a distinguished biologist, teacher, and
writer. He has won more awards than any other scientist (over 20 literary awards, including two Pulitzer Prizes, and over
60 awards for his scientific work, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize); he has received over
40 honorary degrees, written 23 books and 433 technical articles, and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences
and the Royal Society.

Neil Patterson Executive Director

Neil Patterson, Chairman and CEO of the E. O. Wilson Biodiversity Foundation, has founded/co-founded five science
publishing companies, all of them successful:
• Benjamin-Cummings, 1962, now owned by Pearson
• Worth Publishers, 1966, now owned by Von Holtzbrinck
• Garland Science, 1976, now owned by Taylor and Francis
• Scientific American Books, 1980, now owned by Von Holtzbrinck
• Neil Patterson Publishers, 1984, purchased by Viacom/Paramount
He has also served as President and Editorial Director of the College Division of W. W. Norton (1977–80) and President of
W. H. Freeman (1980–84). He has published books by 19 Nobel Laureates as well as 24 leading science textbooks for
college students in the physical and social sciences and mathematics.
In collaboration with Windfall Films, he served as Executive Producer of the Emmy Award winning five-part (PBS/WNET)
TV show, DNA (celebrating the 50th anniversary of Watson and Crick’s discovery of the structure of the gene) and
Executive Producer of the NOVA (PBS/WGBH) TV show Lord of the Ants, (about Ed Wilson’s life and work).

Morgan Ryan Project Director

Morgan Ryan is Managing Editor of American Scientist magazine. For twenty years has was a developer of science
textbooks and digital materials for the high school and college markets. He has served as Executive Editor for publishing
divisions at Prentice Hall and HarperCollins. As a digital producer, he has developed course-length online materials for
college biology (Prentice-Hall, 2005-2007) and high school chemistry (Holt MacDougall, 2008), and he is the author and
producer of a series of instructional modules in life science that were featured from 2004 to 2006 on the home page of
McGraw-Hill’s AccessScience.com, a science news site. His content specialties are cell and molecular biology,
biochemistry, genetics, and evolution.

Gaël McGill Digital Media Director

Gaël McGill is Director of Molecular Visualization at the Center for Molecular and Cellular Dynamics at Harvard Medical
School, where he also teaches scientific visualization. He is the founder and CEO of Digizyme, Inc., a firm dedicated to
the visualization and communication of science through advanced technology applications. Dr. McGill is the creator of the
online portal molecularmovies.org and the Molecular Maya (mMaya) software toolkit, as well as a technical editor for
Wiley/SYBEX Publishing, where he has edited leading textbooks on the 3D applications Maya and ZBrush. He serves as
a scientific and communications consultant for the Boston Scientific Corporation and remains a Technical Review Board
member there. He is also a scientific advisory board member of Vast Scientific and Sage Science and has served as
Director of Product Development & New Technologies at Xpogen, Inc., an enterprise bioinformatics software company.
After working at Dupont-Merck Pharmaceuticals and INSERM/Cochin Hospital in Paris, he completed his Ph.D. at
Harvard Medical School in the Division of Medical Sciences (Biochemistry & Molecular Pharmacology) and postdoctoral
fellowship at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute. His research on the mechanisms of tumor cell death/apoptosis was
supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals fellowships. He received his B.A.
summa cum laude in Biology, Music, and Art History from Swarthmore College.
Karen Hopkin Writer

Karen Hopkin is a science journalist and textbook author who has worked in print, online, and for broadcast. She
received her Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1992, and began her writing career
soon after. She has developed material for broadcast as an AAAS Mass Media Fellow and was a producer for NPR’s Talk
of the Nation: Science Friday. After a yearlong Knight Fellowship at MIT, Hopkin signed on as an author on Bruce Alberts’
market-leading undergraduate textbook, Essential Cell Biology. Hopkin is currently a columnist for The Scientist and a
regular contributor to Scientific American’s daily podcast, 60-Second Science.

Drew Berry Animation Director

Drew Berry is a biomedical animator specializing in science topics at the microscopic scale, has a masters degree in cell
biology and works at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research (WEHI), Australia. He began by filming living
cells with time-lapse microscopy but has spent the last dozen years developing novel, state-of-the-art animation
techniques that illuminate the frontiers of cellular and molecular biology. His work has been featured in many national
news and current affairs programs, documentaries, museum exhibitions, and education multimedia. In 2010, Drew was
awarded the prestigious MacArthur Foundation fellowship. His other recent awards include:
• Niche Prize, Nature journal and the Royal Institution of Great Britain, UK 2008
• Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, First Place, National Science Foundation, USA 2006
• Emmy Award, Outstanding Science, Technology and Nature Programming, for DNA documentary series, 2005
• BAFTA award for DNA Interactive DVD, 2004
• Alias Maya Master award, USA 2005

His recent exhibits include:

• University of Geneva 450th anniversary celebration (traveling 14-meter dome exhibit) 2009
• Rose Center for Earth and Space, American Museum of Natural History, New York 2006
• Forum Kultur und Wirtschaft Dusseldorf (Museum of Design), exhibition, Germany 2006–7
• Shanghai Zendai Museum of Modern Art exhibition, China 2006
• Museum of Modern Art “Premieres” exhibition, New York 2004–5
• Te Manawa Science Center exhibition, New Zealand 2005–6
• National Academy of Sciences Koshland Science Museum, Permanent Display, Washington DC 2004–6
• ACMI Federation Square exhibition, Australia 2003–4
• SIGGRAPH Electronic Theatre, San Diego 2003
• International Genetics Congress 2003 opening ceremony performance, Australia 2003
Pompidou Centre, “oZone” Cinema of Tomorrow Experimental Digital Media Art Festival, Paris 2003

Jay Vavra K-12 Content Director

Jay Vavra directs the biology education program at High Tech High. He studied biology at Stanford University and later
earned a Ph.D. in marine biology from the University of Southern California. His students have produced four books on
various aspects of urban ecology in San Diego Bay and three have been published. He has received several teaching
awards, including an Amgen Award for Science Teaching Excellence (2007) and the Genzyme-Invitrogen Biotech
Educator of the Year Award (2008), as well as the National Education Association Christa McAuliffe Award. He and his
eleventh graders received a Busch Gardens–Fuji Film Environmental Excellence Award, and their film about the African
bushmeat crisis was selected as Best in Show at the National Council on Science and the Environment convention
(2008).

David Dugan Film Director

David Dugan, Chairman of Windfall Films, has filmed on seven continents in over forty countries, producing numerous
series for PBS, Channel Four (UK), BBC, and National Geographic. His strong narrative approach to science
documentaries has earned many major awards, including three Emmys, a Royal Television Society award, and two British
Science Writer Awards. He recently produced, with Neil Patterson, a NOVA/PBS show, Lord of the Ants, a portrait of
inspirational Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson narrated by Harrison Ford, and with Neil Patterson Productions was the
creator and producer of the Emmy-award-winning series DNA, marking the fiftieth anniversary of the double helix. Before
Windfall Films, Dugan spent ten years at the BBC producing documentaries on a range of subjects from the rise and fall
of Robert Maxwell to the first genetic engineering experiment on a human being. He also worked at WGBH in Boston,
where he produced The Search For The Disappeared for NOVA. His awards include:
• DNA (2003)
Emmy for outstanding science & nature documentary
Grierson Award for Best Science & Nature documentary
Indie Award for Best Science documentary
New York Film Festival Gold Medal
Cine Golden Eagle
Association of British Science Writers Award
• Reality On The Rocks (1995)
Image et Science Awards Special Jury Prize
• Lost Civilisations: Africa (1995)
Primetime Emmy: Best Factual Series
• The Real Jurassic Park (1993)
Glaxo British Science Writers Award
• The Elements (1991)
Banff Television Festival: Best Popular Science Film
Cable Ace Award
Royal Television Society Award
• Red Star In Orbit (BBC TV; titled The Russian Right Stuff for PBS NOVA)
1990
• Emmy for Outstanding Historical Programming.
Prix de Reportage, Jules Verne prize, Paris