The Beak of the Finch by Jonathan Weiner focuses on the research of Jonathan and Rosemary Grant, two Princeton biologists who have lived and worked on the Galapagos Islands for over 20 years and have documented the effects of natural selection on the group of birds known as Darwin's finches. Weiner's account of their study and of current ideas about population dynamics is surprisingly readable; in fact, it earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1994.
Edmund O. Wilson's life-long study of the ants would easily have earned him a place in science history. But Wilson has also been a key player in developing such larger ideas as sociobiology, biodiversity, and zoogeography. His memoir, Naturalist, shows how even the work of a great scientist is rooted in the natural curiosity and sense of wonder which began in his childhood.