Thomas Dyer Seeley is the Horace White Professor in Biology in the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

. He is the author of several books on

honeybee A honey bee (also spelled honeybee) is a eusocial flying insect within the genus ''Apis'' of the bee clade, all native to Afro-Eurasia. After bees spread naturally throughout Africa and Eurasia, humans became responsible for the current cosmo ...

behavior, including ''Honeybee Democracy'' (2010) and ''The Wisdom of the Hive'' (1995) He was the recipient of the

Humboldt Prize The Humboldt Prize, the Humboldt-Forschungspreis in German, also known as the Humboldt Research Award, is an award given by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation of Germany to internationally renowned scientists and scholars who work outside of G ...

Biology Biology is the scientific study of life. It is a natural science with a broad scope but has several unifying themes that tie it together as a single, coherent field. For instance, all organisms are made up of cells that process hereditary i ...

in 2001. He primarily studies

swarm intelligence Swarm intelligence (SI) is the collective behavior of decentralized, self-organized systems, natural or artificial. The concept is employed in work on artificial intelligence. The expression was introduced by Gerardo Beni and Jing Wang in 1989, in ...

by investigating how bees collectively make decisions.

Background

Seeley was born on June 17, 1952. He grew up in Ellis Hollow, and went to elementary, middle and high schools in

Ithaca, NY Ithaca is a city in the Finger Lakes region of New York, United States. Situated on the southern shore of Cayuga Lake, Ithaca is the seat of Tompkins County and the largest community in the Ithaca metropolitan statistical area. It is named a ...

. As a high school student he held summer jobs with Royse P. Murphy, a plant geneticist at

, and

Roger Morse Roger A. Morse, Ph.D. (July 5, 1927 - May 12, 2000) was an American bee biologist who taught many beekeepers both the rudiments and the finer practices, through his research and publications. During his long career, three new parasites of the hone ...

, at the Dyce Laboratory for Honey Bee Studies at Cornell. Seeley married Robin Hadlock and the couple had two children.

Education

Seeley enrolled at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

in 1970, intending to follow the premedical curriculum, but changed his focus after reading

E. O. Wilson Edward Osborne Wilson (June 10, 1929 – December 26, 2021) was an American biologist, naturalist, entomologist and writer. According to David Attenborough, Wilson was the world's leading expert in his specialty of myrmecology, the study of an ...

’s book ''The Insect Societies''. Seeley received his

A.B. Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...

(

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some Sou ...

) in

Chemistry Chemistry is the science, scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a natural science that covers the Chemical element, elements that make up matter to the chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules and ions ...

from Dartmouth College in 1974 and, four years later, his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is a ...

in Biology from

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

. His Ph.D. advisors were

Bert Hölldobler Berthold Karl Hölldobler (born 25 June 1936) is a German sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including ''The Ants'', for which he and his co-author, ...

and E. O. Wilson.

Appointments

Seeley held the following academic appointments:

Honors and awards

In 1966 Seeley was an Eagle Scout. In 1974 he received the Hartshorne Chemistry Medal from Dartmouth College. Four years later he was elected a Junior Fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and in 1983 he was awarded the Morse Prize Fellowship from Yale University. For a year from 1992, he was a

Guggenheim Fellow Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

and then the next year got a Fellowship from Berlin’s Institute for Advanced Study. In 1994 he received the Hambleton Award from the Eastern Apicultural Society. In 1998 he received the Gold Medal for the Best Science Book, (The Wisdom of the Hive). Seeley received the Alexander von Humboldt’s Senior Scientist Prize in 2001 and was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...

that same year. In 2008 he was an elected fellow for the

Animal Behavior Society The Animal Behavior Society is an international non-profit scientific society that encourages and promotes the professional study of animal behavior. It has open membership and also provides a certification and directory for animal behaviorists. T ...

and in 2013 he gave the keynote address at the 33rd International Apimondia Congress in

Kyiv Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

. In 2017 he was awarded fellowship to

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

. A species of

bee Bees are winged insects closely related to wasps and ants, known for their roles in pollination and, in the case of the best-known bee species, the western honey bee, for producing honey. Bees are a monophyly, monophyletic lineage within the ...

, Neocorynurella seeleyi, was named after him in 1997. Seeley was awarded the

Golden Goose Award The Golden Goose Award is a United States award in recognition of scientists whose federally funded basic research has led to innovations or inventions with significant impact on humanity or society. Created by Congressman Jim Cooper of Tennessee i ...

in 2016 for his work on The Honeybee Algorithm. In 2019 he became a member of the

German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (german: Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina – Nationale Akademie der Wissenschaften), short Leopoldina, is the national academy of Germany, and is located in Halle (Saale). Founded ...

Publications

Seeley has authored 5 books, at least 1 newspaper article, and over 175 scholarly publications.

Books

* ''Honeybee Ecology: A Study of Adaptation in Social Life'', published by

Princeton University Press Princeton University Press is an independent publisher with close connections to Princeton University. Its mission is to disseminate scholarship within academia and society at large. The press was founded by Whitney Darrow, with the financial su ...

* ''The Wisdom of the Hive: The Social Physiology of Honeybee Colonies'' * ''Honeybee Democracy'', published by the Princeton University Press. * ''Following the Wild Bees: The Craft and Science of Beehunting'' *''The Lives of Bees: The Untold Story of the Honey Bee in the Wild''

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seeley, Thomas Dyer 1952 births Living people American beekeepers Harvard University alumni Dartmouth College alumni Cornell University faculty Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Members of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina