Gene E. Robinson: One Million Honey Bees

At eighteen, Gene E. Robinson was spending time on a kibbutz in Israel harvesting grapefruit, and he longed for something less monotonus and more engaging. When offered the chance to help in a honey bee apiary, he leapt at it—and found himself captivated. The hum of the hives, the intricate order of their activity, and the intelligence of their collective behavior struck him with unexpected force. Standing amid the buzz and motion, he sensed a new world opening before him. In that moment, Robinson discovered the fascination that would shape his life’s work: understanding the mystery and marvel of the honey bee. Robinson is a professor of entomology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and an internationally recognized leader in the biology of social behavior of honey bees. He has been a long-serving director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB). He holds a Swanlund Chair and a Center for Advanced Study Professorship, with affiliate appointments in the Department of Cell & Developmental Biology, the Program in Ecology, Evolution and Conservation Biology, and the Beckman Institute for Science and Technology. Robinson earned three degrees from Cornell University: B.S. (Life Sciences, 1977); M.S. (Entomology, 1982); and Ph.D. (Entomology, 1986). Following an NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Ohio State University, he joined the University of Illinois faculty in 1989.