Monday, August 28, 2006

For Hamilton, his science was inseparable not
just from his life but also from his death. He wrote a
moving article entitled "My Intended Burial and Why?",
in which he expresses his desire to have his body
dealt with thus: " I will leave a sum in my last will
for my body to be carried to Brazil and to these
forests. It will be laid out in a manner secure
against the possums and the vultures just as we make
our chickens secure; and this great Coprophanaeus
beetle will bury me. They will enter, will bury, will
live on my flesh; and in the shape of their children
and mine, I will escape death. No worm for me nor
sordid fly, I will buzz by the dusk like a huge bumble
bee".

W.D. Hamilton (1936-2000) - British evolutionary biologist