Wade Davis

An ethnographer, writer, photographer, and filmmaker, Davis holds degrees in anthropology and biology and received his Ph.D. in ethnobotany, all from Harvard University. His work has taken him from the Amazon to Tibet, from the Arctic to Africa, from Australia to Mongolia, living for extended periods among indigenous communities, learning and recording their complex rituals and customs, and their uses of plants as food, medicine and psychotropic agents. Davis is the author of 14 books including The Serpent and the Rainbow (1986), One River (1996), The Clouded Leopard (1999), Light at the Edge of the World (2001), The Lost Amazon (2004) and Into the Silence: the Great War, Mallory and the Conquest of Everest (2011), an account of the first British attempts to climb Mount Everest in 1921-24. In 2009 he delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, Canada’s most prestigious intellectual forum, which were published as his latest book, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World (2009). His many film credits include Light at the Edge of the World, an eight hour documentary series produced for the National Geographic Channel. He is one of 20 Honorary Members of the Explorer's Club, a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and an Honorary Member and Fellow of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society.