Konrad Lorenz

Biography

It makes studies of medicine and at thirty-four years, it teaches the animal Psychologie and the Comparative anatomy with Vienna during three years. Member with the Nazi party in 1938, at the time of the annexation of Austria by Germany, it is made enthusiastic lawyer of the Nazism. Fill with enthusiasm it lengthily and on several occasions repented including when one had ceased asking him for accounts (in particular in its speech of thanks at the time of the handing-over of the Nobel Prize nearly thirty years after its denazification). In 1940, he becomes professor at the university of Königsberg where he occupies the pulpit of Emmanuel Kant.

Volunteer in 1941 in the army as doctor psychiatrist near the German soldiers suffering from traumatic shocks. He is made prisoner by the Russians in 1942 and is off-set in Soviet Arménie until 1948. In its later work, Lorenz will make use of this experiment (enthusiasm nationalism and reports of the damage of the washing of brains among nazifiés German and communized Russian) to work out a criticism of the drifts of the instinct of aggression at the man. Dénazifié of gladly, it directs the institute of ethology compared Altenberg of 1949 to 1951 then the Institut max Planck of behavioral physiology (one of the 80 research institutes of the Société max Planck) of Buldern (1951-1954) then that of Seewiesen (1954). It receives in 1973, jointly with Karl von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen, the Nobel Prize of physiology or medicine for their discoveries concerning “the organization and the description of the modes of individual and social behavior”; it is about the only Nobel Prize ever given to specialists in the behavior. Their work constitutes the bases of a new discipline of the Biologie: the ethology.

At the end of its life, Lorenz, near of the movements ecologists and Antinuclear S, devotes its research to a humanistic reflection on becoming to it Humanité.

Genealogy and relationship

The Father of Konrad Lorenz

Adolf Lorenz was born in Silesia, small town of Austria at the time. Wire of a harness-maker, it known a difficult childhood and will souffra of poverty. In spite of its modest origins, he became anatomist then surgeon. The repeated use of phenol, used as disinfectant at the time, burned the hands to him. With old thirty years it reorientated its career and became orthopedist, it opened a cabinet with Vienna, Maria and discovered the village of Altenberg at the time of its honeymoon seven days.

Practitioner always of the open operations (it used from now on alcohol in the place of phenol), it developed a new operation for the treatment of the congenital dismantling of the hip. Surgeon with growing popularity, it bought a country house with Altenberg then bought pieces of ground gradually and increases his field. The house of Altenberg became the native house of their first wire, Albert.

With the approach of around fifty, it became a celebrity in its field. It then made fortune while moving in the United States to operate the girl of an industrial rich person (Armor). It obtained nearly a million dollards for its fees. He became a true medical celebrity then, guest to make the demonstration of his method everywhere. They is at that time, twenty years after the birth of Albert, that acquired Konrad.

It entirely lost its fortune in the monetary crisis which shook Austria and Germany during the First World War. It remade fortune after the war, then reperda all during the world monetary crisis of 1929. Only the manor of Altenberg, although devalized three times, remained always a family property. Konrad preserved only very few memories of these years of deprivation.

Adolph Lorenz was selected for the Nobel Prize and, at the request of the committee, it communicated to them the whole of its work concerning the operation with the hip without hemorrhage. Unfortunately, it missed the price by only one way.

Adolf Lorenz tells its life in an autobiography: the Research of the Glove Lost .

The Mother of Konrad Lorenz

Emma To lick , girl of good family but without fortune, was also doctor and assistant of Doctor Adolf Lorenz. She was confined with difficulty of Konrad at the age of forty-two years, she received leave of her work of assistant during the five pre-school years of Konrad.

The brother of Konrad Lorenz

Albert Lorenz followed the traces of his/her father and became orthopedic surgeon. He survived two wars and four marriages, he died in more than eighty years.

The woman of Konrad Lorenz

Margarethe Gebhardt (Gretl) is the intimate friend of childhood of Konrad which shared its plays and its attraction for the animal world. Although more old woman that him three years, they spent almost all their time together. Girl of the neighbors, her market-gardening father with Saint-Andréa (adjacent village of Altenberg) was an autodidact having a well furnished library, contrary to that of the father of Konrad. She finished studies of medicines and Maria Konrad in 1927, the year of the first publication of this one: Observation on the jackdaw , published in the newspaper of ornithology of Leipniz. In fact, it is it with a friend, Bernhard Hellmann, which typed with the machine the work of Konrad and posted it in Berlin with the large specialist in the behavior Oskar Heinroth. It is thus thanks to his wife that its career began from scientist.

Its studies

At the six years age it began its primary schooling in a private school, financed by a rich person Master-baker Viennese (Mendel) and directed by one of his aunts who was teacher there.

To eleven years, it entered to the famous Schotten college to Vienna, it studied there, to start, that chemistry, physics and the history. It finished its formation like boarder and it studied the traditional traditional matters and science, particularly biology.

In 1922, his/her father decided to send it to study medicine in New York, at the university of Colombia. He met there, by chance, professor Thomas Hunt Morgan, the father of the modern genetics and had the privilege to observe its first chromosome in his microscope. After only one quarter, worrying too much what could to occur with Gretl (or rather of which it could meet), he decided to return to Vienna.

He studied medicine at the university of Königsberg and learned the comparative anatomy with professor Ferdinand Hochstetter. Hochstetter which was director of the institute of anatomy, taught also the phylogenetic comparative one to him, i.e., how to rebuild the family tree of the species starting from the similarities and the anatomical differences. Hochstetter made of Konrad its demonstrator in anatomy, the year even where Gretl (its future wife) began its medicine; he became his instructor then.

In 1928, it obtained the title of doctor of medicine although it at all did not intend to make his profession of it. He then became assistant of Hochstetter and its work with this one finished hardly a few years later when the old man took his retirement. Lorenz did not get along with its successor and then decided to study the zoology. In 1933, at the time of its second doctorate, it supported a long thesis which it had already published on the flight of the birds and with the adaptation of the various shapes of wings. Anecdotic fact, it supported its thesis in front of a professor having never read it and who was very attached to the existing ideas. It thus gave the answers until the professor waited, it did not see the need for going to counter-current.

Its research

Professor Hochstetter regarded Lorenz as a pioneer of the application of his own methods to a new field. This fact is also reported by Lorenz itself in several of its books. The principal idea consists in applying the methods of the comparative anatomy, developed by Hochstetter, with the analysis of the animal behavior.

Each animal specie develops a clean range of individual or social behaviors. For the ethologist, the knowledge of the animal behavior begin with its description, however, this knowledge must grow rich by attempts aiming at explaining the behavior. One calls éthogramme the whole of the stable forms of behavior listed in an animal specie. One can classify them in four categories:

* the dimension of immediate causality : reaction to a Stimulus.

* ontogenetic dimension : the Innate and programmed behavior .

* phylogenetic dimension : differences and resemblances between species.

* adaptive dimension , or functional : the external factors which generated a behavior.

The fundamental concepts that it brought to the ethology are the endogenous actions, the innate mechanisms of release, activities of substitution and Empreinte…

From its point of view of ethologist, Konrad Lorenz as studied the Rite as he interpreted as an adaptive form that a Culture gives to the individual Agressivité of its members to circumscribe its disordered and undesirable effects and a contrario to develop its contribution to the conservation of the group.

Konrad Lorenz passed most of its life being studied of greylag gooses, then completing the most complete work at present on this species.

Price and distinctions

International distinctions

Professor emeritus of the universities of Münster (1953) and of Munich (1957).
Member elect of the Merit of Sciences and Arts (Germany, 1950).
foreign Member of the Royal Society (England, 1964) and of the National American Academy off Sciences (1966).
honorary Member several companies of which: Leeds (1962), Basle (1966), then Yale, Chicago, Oxford and Birmingham.
Member elect of the world Price Cino Del Duca (1969).
Nobel Prize of physiology or medicine (1973).

Austrian distinctions

Member elect of the Price of the town of Vienna (1959).
Austrian Distinction for Science and Arts (1964).
the Ring of Paracelse of the town of Villach (1973).

References

Random links: