Editing Konrad Lorenz (section)

== Biography ==
[[File:Lorenz 1904.jpg|thumb|upright|Lorenz in 1904 with his elder brother]]

Lorenz was the son of [[Adolf Lorenz]], a wealthy and distinguished surgeon, and his wife [[Emma Lorenz|Emma]] (née Lecher), a physician who had been her husband's assistant.<ref>Konrad Lorenz, Alec Nisbett, Dent, 1976, p. 15</ref> The family lived on a large estate at Altenberg, and had a city apartment in Vienna.<ref name="nytimes.com">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/01/obituaries/konrad-lorenz-pioneer-in-study-of-animals-behavior-dies-at-85.html|title = Konrad Lorenz, Pioneer in Study of Animals' Behavior, Dies at 85|newspaper = The New York Times|date = March 1989|last1 = Sullivan|first1 = Walter}}</ref> He was educated at the [[Schottengymnasium|Public Schottengymnasium of the Benedictine monks in Vienna]].

In his autobiographical essay, published in 1973 in ''Les Prix Nobel'' (winners of the prizes are requested to provide such essays), Lorenz credits his career to his parents, who "were supremely tolerant of my inordinate love for animals", and to his childhood encounter with [[Selma Lagerlöf]]'s ''[[The Wonderful Adventures of Nils]]'', which filled him with a great enthusiasm about wild geese."<ref>{{cite book |last=Nisbett |first=Alec |title=Konrad Lorenz |year=1976 |isbn=978-0-15-147286-4 |page=[https://archive.org/details/konradlorenz00alec/page/72 72] |publisher=Harcourt Brace Jovanovich |url=https://archive.org/details/konradlorenz00alec/page/72 }}</ref>

At the request of his father, Adolf Lorenz, he began a premedical curriculum in 1922 at [[Columbia University]],<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Columbia College (Columbia University). Office of Alumni Affairs and Development |url=http://archive.org/details/ldpd_12981092_031 |title=Columbia College today |last2=Columbia College (Columbia University) |date=1989 |publisher=New York, N.Y. : Columbia College, Office of Alumni Affairs and Development |others=Columbia University Libraries}}</ref> but he returned to Vienna in 1923 to continue his studies at the [[University of Vienna]]. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine (MD) in 1928 and became an assistant professor at the Institute of Anatomy until 1935. He finished his zoological studies in 1933 and received his second doctorate (PhD).<ref name="Routledge">{{cite book |last1=Lorenz|first1=Konrad |year=2007|title=King Solomon's Ring |edition=3rd |publisher=[[Routledge]] |location=London |isbn=978-0-415-26747-2 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/kingsolomonsring00lore_200/page/n43 4]–5|title-link=King Solomon's Ring (nonfiction) }}</ref>

While still a student, Lorenz began developing what would become a large [[menagerie]], ranging from domestic to exotic animals. In his popular book ''[[King Solomon's Ring (nonfiction)|King Solomon's Ring]]'', Lorenz recounts that while studying at the University of Vienna he kept a variety of animals at his parents' apartment, ranging from fish to a [[capuchin monkey]] named Gloria.<ref name="Routledge" />

In 1936, at an international scientific symposium on instinct, Lorenz met his great friend and colleague [[Nikolaas Tinbergen]]. Together they studied [[geese]]—wild, [[Domestic goose|domestic]], and [[Gamebird hybrids#Goose hybrids|hybrid]]. One result of these studies was that Lorenz "realized that an overpowering increase in the drives of feeding as well as of copulation and a waning of more differentiated social instincts is characteristic of very many domestic animals". Lorenz began to suspect and fear "that analogous processes of deterioration may be at work with civilized humanity." This observation of bird hybrids caused Lorenz to believe that domestication resulting from urbanisation in humans might also cause [[dysgenic]] effects, and to argue in two papers that the [[Nazi eugenics]] policies against this were therefore scientifically justified.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Klopfer |first=Peter |year=1994 |title=Konrad Lorenz and the National Socialists: On the Politics of Ethology |journal=International Journal of Comparative Psychology |volume=7 |issue=4 |pages=202–208 |doi=10.46867/C4P30R |s2cid=141222261 |url=http://escholarship.org/uc/item/50b5r4d6 |doi-access=free }}</ref>

[[File:Konrad lorenz-rusky lagr 1944-fotka.jpg|upright|thumb|Lorenz as a [[German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union|Soviet POW]] in 1944]]

In 1940 he became a professor of [[psychology]] at the [[University of Königsberg]]. He was drafted into the [[Wehrmacht]] in 1941. He sought to be a motorcycle mechanic, but instead he was assigned as a military psychologist, conducting racial studies on humans in occupied [[Poznań]] under [[Rudolf Hippius]]. The objective was to study the biological characteristics of "German-Polish half-breeds" to determine whether they 'benefited' from the same work ethics as 'pure' Germans.<ref>{{cite book |first=Ute |last=Deichmann |year=1992 |title=Biologists under Hitler: Expulsion, Careers, Research |location=Frankfurt/Main, New York |publisher= [[Harvard University Press]]|pages=261–264 |isbn=978-0-674-07404-0 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last=Klopfer|first=Peter|date=1994|title=Konrad Lorenz and the National Socialists: On the Politics of Ethology|url=https://escholarship.org/uc/item/50b5r4d6|journal=International Journal of Comparative Psychology|language=en|volume=7|issue=4|doi=10.46867/C4P30R |s2cid=141222261 |issn=0889-3667|doi-access=free}}</ref> The degree to which Lorenz participated in the project is unknown, but the project director Hippius referred a couple of times to Lorenz as an "examining psychologist".<ref name=patterns />

Lorenz later described that he once saw transports of [[Nazi concentration camps|concentration camp]] inmates at [[Fort VII]] near [[Poznań]], which made him "fully realize the complete inhumanity of the Nazis".<ref>Alec Nisbett, ''Konrad Lorenz'' (1976), {{ISBN|0-15-147286-6}}, page 94.</ref>

He was sent to the [[Eastern Front (World War II)|Russian front]] in 1944 where he quickly became a [[German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union|prisoner of war in the Soviet Union]] from 1944 to 1948. In captivity in [[Soviet Armenia]],<ref>{{cite news |last1=Sullivan |first1=Walter |title=Konrad Lorenz, Pioneer in Study Of Animals' Behavior, Dies at 85 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/01/obituaries/konrad-lorenz-pioneer-in-study-of-animals-behavior-dies-at-85.html |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=1 March 1989}}</ref> he continued to work as a medic and "became tolerably fluent in Russian and got quite friendly with some Russians, mostly doctors."<ref>{{cite web |title=Konrad Lorenz: Biographical |url=https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1973/lorenz/biographical/ |website=nobelprize.org}}</ref> When he was repatriated, he was allowed to keep the manuscript of a book he had been writing and his pet [[starling]]. He arrived back in Altenberg (his family home, near Vienna) both "with manuscript and bird intact." The manuscript became his 1973 book ''[[Behind the Mirror: A Search for a Natural History of Human Knowledge|Behind the Mirror]]''.<ref name="Nobelprize.org"/>

The [[Max Planck Society]] established the Lorenz Institute for Behavioral Physiology in [[Buldern]], Germany, in 1950. In his memoirs, Lorenz described the chronology of his war years differently from what historians have been able to document after his death. He himself claimed that he was captured in 1942, where in reality he was only sent to the front and captured in 1944, leaving out entirely his involvement with the Poznań project.<ref name="Nobelprize.org"/>

In 1958, Lorenz transferred to the [[Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology]] in Seewiesen. He shared the 1973 [[Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine]] "for discoveries in individual and social behavior patterns" with two other important early [[ethologists]], [[Nikolaas Tinbergen]] and [[Karl von Frisch]]. In 1969, he became the first recipient of the [[Prix mondial Cino Del Duca]].
He was a friend and student of renowned biologist [[Sir Julian Huxley]] (grandson of "Darwin's bulldog", [[Thomas Henry Huxley]]). Famed psychoanalyst [[Ralph Greenson]] and [[Sir Peter Scott]] were good friends. Lorenz and [[Karl Popper]] were childhood friends; many years after they met, during the celebration of Popper's 80 years, they wrote together a book entitled ''Die Zukunft ist offen''.<ref>Karl Popper and Konrad Lorenz, ''Die Zukunft ist offen: das Altenberger Gespräch, mit den Texten des Wiener Popper-Symposiums'', ed. Franz Kreuzer (Munich: Piper, 1985). Reprinted by Chicago: Northwestern University, 2011.
{{ISBN|978-3-492-00640-8}}
For an English-language discussion of the Vienna of Popper and Lorenz's early years, see Malachi Haim Hacohen, ''Karl Popper – The Formative Years, 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna'' (Cambridge University Press, 2002), 31–34.
{{ISBN|978-0-521-89055-7}}
[https://books.google.com/books?id=3VtHcYGp2pIC&pg=PA31 Google books]</ref>

He retired from the Max Planck Institute in 1973 but continued to research and publish from Altenberg and [[Grünau im Almtal]] in Austria. He died on 27 February 1989 in Altenberg.