Wilson attended
Alliance High School in
Alliance, Ohio, where he ran track and played football. He attended college after serving for four years in the
United States Air Force during the
Vietnam War. He earned a bachelor's degree in biology and a master's degree in botany, both from
Kent State University. He completed a Ph.D. in botany and anthropology from
Indiana University Bloomington. He joined the faculty at Texas A&M University in 1977. In 1980, he received the Edmund H. Fulling Award for the best oral presentation by an early-career scientist at the annual meeting of the Society for Economic Botany. By 1983, Wilson was studying the conditions that allow for the survival of
Spiranthes parksii (Navasota lady's tresses), which was one of 12 endangered plants in Texas. Only 100 to 150 of these
orchids had been identified, and they grew in southern
Brazos County, Texas. In 1994, when
Upjohn was seeking approval for a type of genetically engineered squash, Wilson raised concern that the new disease-resistant squash might be able to crossbreed with other types of squash and produce
superweeds. Wilson was interested in the digitization of botanical data. With two colleagues in the late 1990s, he designed a website with photos and descriptions of
East Texas flowers. The website was named a Coolest Science Site by the
National Academy Press. Wilson was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1990. He retired from Texas A&M in 2011 and died in 2018. ==References==