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In no time he was captured by the Russians and had to spend four years as their Prisoner of War. In 1944, Konrad Lorenz was sent to the Russian Front. He was drafted into the German Army as a Psychologist the very next year. But his stint at the Albertus University at Königsberg was very short. He served as the Professor and Head of the Department of General Psychology at the Albertus University at Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) from 1940 to 1942. In 1937, Konrad Lorenz was taken in as Lecturer in comparative anatomy and animal psychology at the University of Vienna. He continued his pursuit of studying animal behavioral pattern and kept many animals in his home for that purpose. The following year Konrad assumed the position of coeditor-in-chief of the new ‘Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie,’ which eventually became a prime journal for ethology. In 1936, the German Society for Animal Psychology was founded. Konrad Lorenz was appointed as an Assistant Professor in the Institute of Anatomy immediately after his graduation and continued to teach there until 1935. Meanwhile, in 1927, he published his detailed observations of a jackdaw in the prestigious journal of ornithology, ‘für Ornithologie.’ In 1928, he graduated as Doctor of Medicine (M.D.) and in 1933 he was awarded a Ph.D. After that, he came back to Vienna and continued to pursue the study of Medicine at the University of Vienna.
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In 1922, following his father’s wish, Konrad Lorenz went to the Columbia University in New York City to study Medicine after graduating from secondary school. He also kept a diary and recorded detailed observations of bird behaviour in it. By the time he turned a teenager, he had started providing nursing care to the animals of a nearby zoo, Schönbrunner Zoo. He had a stock of animals as diverse as fish, bird, dog, monkey, cat, and rabbits in his possession. Konrad Lorenz's boyhood excursions were his frequent source of procuring different species of animals, and he brought them to his home with alarming regularity. His father was very supportive of his son’s such unusual and unpopular subject of interest. During Konrad’s childhood days he developed a keen interest in all kinds of animals including insects and birds and their behavioral pattern. His father Adolf Lorenz was an orthopaedic surgeon. Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was born on November 7, 1903, in the Austrian capital city of Vienna. He shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1973 with fellow animal behaviourist Karl Von Frisch and Nikolaas Tinbergen.
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Ethology is the study of animal behaviour, and Konrad is regarded as the Founding Father of Ethology. Konrad Lorenz was a Nobel Laureate Austrian scientist, who specialized in Zoology, Ornithology and above all Ethology. He was not released for repatriation to Austria till 1948.įact 9 His best-known books are “King Solomon’s Ring” (1949) and “On aggression” (1966), both written for a popular audience.įact 10 Lorenz died on Februin Altenberg.Konrad Lorenz: The Founding Father of Ethology He also worked on the development of social relationships, particularly imprinting.įact 6 In 1973, Lorenz, Karl Frisch and Tinbergen jointly accepted the Nobel Prize for their behavioral research.įact 7 Lorenz retired in 1973 from the Max Planck Institute but continued to research and publish from Alternberg and Grünau im Almtal in Australia.įact 8 Konrad Lorenz served as a doctor in the Germany army and became a prisoner of war in 1942. At the age of 10 he read Charles Darwin’s evolutionary theory and developed a fascination for science.įact 2 He gained a degree in medicine in 1929 and was awarded a doctorate in zoology at the University of Vienna and in 1933 Lorenz earned his PhD in that field.įact 3 Between the years 1935 to 1938, Lorenz developed the theories for which he is best known.įact 4 From 1961 to 1973 Konrad Lorenz was the director of the Max Planck Institute for Behaviour Physiology, in Seewiesen, Germany.įact 5 His career as an animal behaviorist was launched when an ornithological journalist printed his jackdaw diary. Fact 1 Konrad Lorenz was born on Novemin Vienna, Austria.
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