Lorenz, Konrad Zacharias, << LOH rehnts, KOHN raht `tsah` kah REE ahs >> (1903-1989), an Austrian naturalist, was one of the founders of ethology, the study of animal behavior. Lorenz and two other ethologists–Karl von Frisch of Austria and Nikolaas Tinbergen, born in the Netherlands–received the 1973 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for their work on animal behavior.
Unlike psychologists, who had studied animal behavior in laboratories, Lorenz studied animals in their natural environments. He observed that instinct plays a major role in animal behavior–a view that conflicted with the ideas of many psychologists. He described the instinctive process of imprinting, by which, for example, an animal may learn to identify its owner as its parent (see Instinct (Imprinting) .
Lorenz was born in Vienna. He earned an M.D. degree in 1928 and a Ph.D. degree in 1933, both at the University of Vienna. In 1954, Lorenz became codirector of the Max Planck Institute for Physiology of Behavior in Germany. He became director of the Institute of Comparative Ethology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 1973.
Lorenz wrote several books on animals and their behavior. They include King Solomon’s Ring (1952) and On Aggression (1966).
