Lorenz, Konrad

Zoologist and Ethologist 1903-1989

Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and Nobel Prize winner Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was born in Vienna in 1903, the son of a fabulously wealthy orthopedic surgeon. He spent his childhood roaming the forests and marshes of the family estate on the banks of the Danube in the company of the teeming wildlife of the area and a neighbor, Gretl Gebhardt. It was at play, splashing in the marshes pretending to be ducks, that the two seven-year-olds discovered what would become Lorenz's lifelong work. Newly hatched ducklings saw the children and followed them as though they were the ducklings' parents. This phenomenon, now called imprinting, is an example of a genetically programmed pattern of behavior that is innate in all members of a species but is dormant until triggered by some crucial experience. In the case of the ducks, imprinting stimulated them to follow and mimic the first thing they saw upon hatching. Lorenz went on to establish that birds and mammals imprint upon birth, by sight, sound, touch, or smell.

Lorenz obtained a medical degree in 1928 from the University of Vienna, where he reunited and married his childhood friend Gebhardt, who had become a gynecologist. He then immersed himself in his lifelong passion: observation of animals in their natural habitat.

After World War II (1939-1945) Lorenz moved his family to his childhood estate, Altenberg, and surrounded by animals both domestic and wild, he began a series of popular books. King Solomon's Ring, published in 1949, consisted of lively stories about his pets and their behavior as well as about Lorenz's relationships with a number of wild birds. Man Meets Dog, published in 1950, discussed the ancient and intimate bonds between human beings and dogs.

That same year, Lorenz and Erich von Holst established the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology at Altenberg. For the next twenty years Lorenz concentrated on the study of waterfowl, particularly investigating the process of instinct: how and why animals behave in appropriate and complex ways without human reasoning.

Lorenz dramatically shaped the way in which scientists approached the study of animal minds and behavior. In the mid-twentieth century, scientists tended to observe animals isolated in cages and to believe that all behavior was learned. Lorenz popularized ethology, the more difficult study of animal behavior in the field under natural conditions. His years of observations along with colleagues Nikolas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch established the existence of many genetically inherited behavior patterns in animals, all subject to natural selection. Their work led to a shared Nobel Prize in 1973 in the field of physiology. Konrad Lorenz was also awarded the Gold Medal of the New York Zoological Society, was elected to the Royal Society of London and the American National Academy of Sciences, and received numerous honorary degrees worldwide.

Toward the end of his life in 1989, Lorenz said of his duckling discoveries with Gebhardt, "What we didn't notice is that I got imprinted on ducks in the process. I still am, you know. And I contend that a lifelong endeavor is fixed by one decisive experience in early youth. And that after all, is the essence of imprinting." (Wolf 1983, p. 32-34).