Konrad Lorenz

 Konrad Lorenz was born on November 7, 1903 in Austria. As a little boy, he loved animals and collected a variety of them. He had fish, dogs, monkeys, insects, ducks, and geese. His interest in animal behavior was intense. A neighbor gave him a duckling and he noticed that it transferred it's response to him, discovering imprinting as a young child. When he was 10 years old, Lorenz discovered evolution by reading a book by Wilhelm Bolsche. He saw a picture of an extract Archaeopteryx ( reptile) and began to understand the relationship between an earthworm and insects. Evolution gave him insight. If reptiles could become birds, annelid worms could develop into insects. As an adult, he held doctorates in medicine, zoology, and psychology and became one of Austria's most famous scientists.

Initially, he wanted to become a paleontologist, although he was interested in evolution and wanted to study zoology and paleontology. However, he obeyed his father and went to medical school. He studied medicine at Vienna, became a professor at the Albertus University in Konigberg, and went on to direct the Institute of Comparative Ethology at Altenberg, where he created a comparative ethology department in the Max Planck Institute. He co-directed the program in 1954. He is considered the founder of ethology, who has given to the world a deeper insight of behavioral patterns in animals.

In 1966, he wrote On Aggression in which he argued that animal aggressive behavior is motivated by survival, while humans aggressive behavior may be channeled or modified. His other books include King Solomon's Ring (1949), Man Meets Dog (1950), The Eight Deadly Sins of Civilized Humanity, and The Decay of the Humane. In 1973 he won a Nobel Prize (shared with Karl Von Frisch & Niko Tinbergen) for his studies of human and animal behavior. This was the first such prize to be awarded to behavioral scientists and was shared by the founders of the field of ethology. Konrad Lorenz was 85 years old whan he died in 1989.