The evening paid tribute to legendary biologist (and beloved TED Prize winner) E.O Wilson, on the occasion of his 80th birthday, but the program was really a love letter to science itself — for its importance, yes, but also for the inspiration and wonder it offers, and for its deep but often-unacknowledged kinship with the arts.

“Tonight, science and art, long-lost lovers, reunite” Alan Alda said, as he opened the show. And that sensibility pervaded the program, as it blended science and the arts in innovative and unusual ways — from a sequence of broadway musical stars singing light-hearted tributes to science (For example, a guided tour of the periodic table, set to the tune of Gilbert & Sullivan’s “I am the very model of a modern major general”. Brilliant!) to an intellectual pas de deux, featuring Brian Greene waxing eloquent on the nature of the universe, and Joshua Bell performing lyrically on the violin.

The evening included several heartfelt odes to Wilson — the transcendent cellist YoYo Ma performed playfully as young “ants” wiggle-danced around him (Wilson’s career was built on his research on ants); Anna Deavere Smith impersonated Wilson as only she could. And Nobel winner James Watson (of Watson & Crick double-helix fame) paid homage in his own eccentric way: “When we first met, Ed thought I was the most unpleasant person he’d ever known,” Watson explained to a chuckling audience. “And when I first met Ed, I didn’t think there was any point in knowing him. Because everyone knew: Biology was the dumb part of science.”

READ MORE: The NY premiere of Frans Lanting’s LIFE, live performance of the Philip Glass score and Wilson’s central message.

Photos: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSFWatson and Wilson ultimately became great friends and colleagues. And Watson conceded, in his endearing curmudgeonly way: “We should all be happy that he hasn’t died prematurely.”

The centerpiece of the evening was the soaring New York premiere of Frans Lanting’s, “LIFE: A Journey Through Time.” The multimedia performance sets Lanting’s extraordinary images of the natural world to a Philip Glass score, performed live by the St Luke’s Orchestra and conducted by creative collaborator Marin Alsop.

Lanting, a National Geographic photographer and poet on the side, presented an early version of the LIFE project at TED2005, and it’s extraordinary to mark its progress and evolution. LIFE is now a book and traveling exhibit, as well as a live performance. It captures the beauty and drama of the natural world through a choreographed collage of contrast and color, pattern and motion. A tiny gazelle at the foot of an elephant; a lion half-hidden in twilight grass; a dove soaring; a frog staring; insects, amoebas, volcanoes, sand dunes. Stunningly beautiful, it leaves the audience struck by both the unity and diversity of life.

And the powerful live performance underscored Wilson’s central messages: The beauty and interconnectedness of life, and our urgent need to engage the broader public with the natural world. During a short speech at the reception following the event, Wilson called on everyone to rise to this challenge. “Entire species are slipping away, and we’re just nattering on,” Wilson said. “We must turn our attention to the natural world. And we need everyone’s attention.”

Photos: Robert Leslie. Courtesy WSF

A few days ago TED2005 speaker Craig Venter (watch his talk) announced that his lab has finished sequencing a single human’s genome — his own. At his old company, Celera, Venter worked on sequencing his genome and four other genomes all mixed together, creating an anonymous composite. He told Newsweek:

What we got this time was a diploid genome—a genome that includes both sets of chromosomes from both my parents. We were surprised at how much variation between individuals there was.
You mean there’s more genetic difference between one person and the next than we previously thought?
Absolutely. It’s quite comforting to me as an individualist that we’re not very close to being clones of one other. (…)
Why did you choose to decode your own genome?
It goes back to the government’s notion that genetics has to be secret and anonymous. But there’s really nothing anonymous with your genetic sequence—it’s the ultimate identifier. I thought it was showing proper leadership—to show that I don’t think there’s any risk in it. I don’t know if there’s any scientist in this field that wouldn’t want to have his own genome known.
(Read the full interview)

Nobel laureate (for co-discovering the double-helix structure of DNA), and fellow TED2005 speaker (watch his talk), James Watson couldn’t probably agree more: he also had his genome fully sequenced three months ago. “Project Jim”, as it was called, took 67 days of sequencing time and cost around USD 1 million. (More in this Newsweek story from June.)

The raw sequencing data of both Watson and Venter are publicly available in the US National Center for Biotechnology Information’s Trace Archive.