Nikolaas Tinbergen (April 15th 1907 with $the Hague - December 21st 1988 with Oxford) is the founder of the comparative ethology, i.e. of the comparative study of the behavior of the animals. It posed the assumption of a hierarchisation of the instincts which brings to include/understand them from an energy point of view. This theory is discussed today.

Very near and friend to Konrad Lorenz, they worked a long time together during the inter-war period, however the behavior of Lorenz during the Second world war gradually moved away them, in spite of the efforts of Tinbergen which saw their association like essential for the future of the ethology. This perception seems to have avoided a final rupture between these two large naturalists. Of Dutch nationality, he resigned of his pulpit in sign of protest vis-a-vis the will of " nettoyage" university by the Nazis. Its simple and clear but crucial experiments posed the bases of the whole of current behaviorist sciences.

It posed the four fundamental questions of the ethology in its published book, in homage to Lorenz, under the title One aims and methods in Ethology (1963; Theory of the social sciences): is

• Which the immediate causes of the behavior? is
• Which its value of survival?
• Comment was it set up during the Ontogenèse?
• Comment was it set up during the Phylogenèse?

It receives the Médaille Elliott Coues decreed by the American Ornithologists' Union in 1972 and, the following year, the Nobel Prize of medicine.

Publications (partial list)

• Tinbergen NR. (1953) The Herring Gull' World . Hakes, London.
• Tinbergen NR. (1971) the Study of the instinct . Payot, Paris.
• Tinbergen NR. (1975) Universe of the gull herring . Elsevier Sequoia, Paris, Brussels, 224 p.