RESEARCH NEWS The 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine

The 1973 Nobel prize for Physiology rel.ated flowers. His thorough experi- leading students. When a colony of or Medicine has been awarded jointly ments in the 1920's settled in the af- is , scouts fly out from the to three zoologists: , firmative the long-standing question teeming cluster of bees that have left 86 years old, of the University of Mu- whether fish could hear. Unsophisti- their former hive and search for a nich; , 69 years old, of cated in the best sense, these experi- cavity where thousands, of bees can the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral ments have been amply confirmed in fly to establish a new colony. When a Physiology at Seewiesen, near Munich; later years with appropriate monochro- scout has located a suitable cavity, she and , 66 years old, mators and hydrophones. An ardent signals its location by the same dance of the Department of Zoology at Ox- Darwinian who successfully defended pattern used for food. Individual bees ford University, for their discoveries his views at his oral examination in exchange information about the suit- concerning organization and elicitation philosophy against a professor who did ability and location of various cavities, of individual and social behavior pat- not believe in evolution, von Frisch sometimes the same acting alter- terns. The award is a new departure was motivated by a naturalist's faith nately as transmitter and receiver of for the Nobel Committee of the Karo- that phenomena such as the colors and information. linska Institute, acknowledging for the scents of flowers, or the Weberian os- Questions have been raised about first time major advances in our under- sicles of catfish, must have an adaptive the aocuracy with which information standing of sociobiology, especially in biological significance. is actually transmitted, and about the the area of behavioral science known In 1923 he described as a simple relative importance of the dances, as . At a time when studies language the round and waggle dances odors, and sounds or vibrations. Phi- of learning in animals were generally of honeybees. In that heyday of be- losophers and linguists may debate conducted in the laboratory, thereby haviorism he observed simply that round whether the term language is appro- posing problems largely irrelevant to dances occurred when foraging bees priate. But, for behavioral scientists, the their natural biology, these three men brought sugar solutions into the hive revolutionary discovery was that an on October 11, 2013 discovered in the natural behavior of from artificial feeders, whereas waggle insect sometimes communicates with animals both learned and innate pat- dances accompanied the gathering of fellow members of a closely integrated terns, exquisitely adapted to their par- pollen. But in 1944 he found ;the real society by flexible, iconic, graded ges- ticular phylogenetically determined ways "Rosetta Stone" to decipher the lan- tures about distant objects that are of life. At one stroke they explained guage of bees: Round dances mean a urgently needed by the social group as some of the most remarkable examples food source nearby, waggle dances one a whole. Behavioral continuity between of the fine control of elaborate patterns at some distance. More important, the animals and men extends even to fruit- of behavior by external stimuli known direction of the straight portion of the ful comparisons between animal com- www.sciencemag.org to science, sometimes learned, some- points the way to -the munication and human language. times not, while leaving in no doubt food, and its duration signals the dis- Konrad Lorenz, acknowledged found- the crucial importance of genetic dif- tance. On a horizontal surface the danc- er of the science of ethology, derived ferences in understanding the develop- ing bee points directly toward the food, his insights into the causation and or- ment of behavior. but ordinarily the dances take place ganization of behavior from studying Karl von Frisch, inspired pioneer inside a dark hive on a vertical surface. fish and birds. At Altenburg in Austria, of has open- IIere straight up corresponds to the the house of his father, a Viennese

comparative physiology, Downloaded from ed our eyes to several unsuspected "sen- direction of the sun, which serves as orthopedist, was always full of animals sory windows" through which animals a directional reference point. But if and birds. A precocious naturalist, view the world, and to complex and the sun is obscured by broken clouds, Lorenz developed early what became versatile communication behavior con- the bees use instead the plane of polari- a lifelong passion for raising both wild trolled by insect nervous systems for- zation of light from patches of blue and domestic animals by hand, and for merly thought capable only of rigid sky. Thus behavioral experiments that living with them in the closest quarters, mechanical responses. Stimulated by a had stemmed from earlier studies of and so gaining insights into the relation distinguished family background in sensory physiology disclosed a new between genome and experience in Vienna, including the physiologist Sig- sensory channel. ontogeny. Medical training at the Uni- mund Exner, his boyhood enthusiasm Von Frisch also demonstrated that versity of Vienna was followed by for biology matured through studies odors are very important to identify excursions, inspired by Ferdinand with Richard von Hertwig, whom he the exact food source, and we now Hochstetter, Karl Buihler, and others, later succeeded as professor of zoology know that sounds or vibrations are also into comparative anatomy, psychology, at Munich. Shortly before World War involved in the communication process. and philosophy. One senses early ten- I von Frisch demonstrated that, con- Bees dance only when the colony is sion between the attractions of a career trary to prevailing scientific opinion, in severe need of something, but dances in medicine and academia, and fascina- fish and honeybees could discriminate are used not only for food but also for tion with the beauty and diversity of colors. After the war he turned to ex- water when it is needed in hot weather animals. During a two-semester stint -in periments on olfaction and showed that to cool the hive. The most remarkable the Columbia Medical School in New bees could distinguish among dozens use of the dances was discovered by York in 1922, he is said to have spent of odors, including the scents of closely , one of von Frisch's more time studying the inhabitants of 464 SCIENCE, VOL. 182 the New York Aquarium than at lec- tures. Comparative ethology was deemed an inappropriate pursuit in the department of anatomy, so to his M.D. degree he added, in 1936, a Ph.D. in zoology at the University of Munich, and remained in that department until 1941. The major features of his theory of behavior were laid during that pe- riod. After World War 11, under the aegis of the Institute for Marine Bi- ology, a Max Planck Institute was es- tablished at Buldern in Westphalia for Lorenz' group, and, in 1958, it became the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, at Seewiesen in Bavaria. Ethological findings derive much of their force and generality from insight- ful use of comparative techniques and subjects selected appropriate to the Nikolaas Tinbergen Kail von Frisch problem. If Lorenz has a totem animal, it is surely the greylag goose in which, with his revered teacher Oskar Hein- motivation to perform certain activities hunting other insects and pro- roth, he discovered imprinting, an espe- and endogenous changes in responsive- visioning nest burrows with the corpses, cially rapid anld relatively irreversible ness to different kinds of stimuli cannot as a tesLinig ground for hypotheses abou- learning process with an optimal critical be omitted from a behavioral theory the sensory control of behavior. An period early in the gosling's life. Im- if it is to have any general validity. opportunity while a graduate student printing, has repercussions not only on Some of his viewpoints as expressed in zoology at the University of Leiden what constitutes an acceptable parental in the popular book Oni Aggr-essionz, to participate in 1931-32 in an Arctic object, or companion as Lorenz called which suggests an endogenous motiva- expedition added snow buntings, phala- it, but also on what becomes an appro- tion to seek out opportunities for fight- ropes, and Eskimo sled dogs to a grow- priate sexual companion when the ing in fish, and perhaps in man as well, Ing list of animals into whose behavior gosling grows up, one of many findings proved highly controversial. However Trinbergen was to cast profound evolu- that have proved heuristically valuable one senses deeper roots to the outrage tionary insights. Returning to join the in psychoanalysis and psychiatry. with which some react to analogies be- zoology faculty at Leiden, a seminal This and other discoveries were in- tween animal and human behavior. In meeting with Lorenz in 1936, followed corporated in the panorama of ethologi- the introduction to the 1970 transla- by a 6-month visit to Altenberg, gave cal theory presented in 1935, and trans- tions of his work, Lorenz reflects wryly rise to their only joint paper, in 1938, lated into English soon afterward by on the egg-rolling behavior of the grey- Margaret Nice, that was at once a The fact thiat the behaviour not only of laig goose. and to more than 30 years treatise on the social behavior of ani- animals, btut of human beings as well, is of mutual cooperation, criticismn, and how the structure of a society to a lairge cxtent determined by nervous stimulation that brought the new science mals and mechanisms evolved in the phylogeny of relates to its component parts, and a the species, in other words, by "", of ethology into full flower. When he manifesto for the objective analysis of was cer-tainly no suLrprise to any biologi- went to Oxford University in 1951, tne natural behavior of animals. A cen- cally-thinking scientist. It was treated as where he becamie a professor of animal tral conception complementary to that a matter of course, wvhich, in fact, it is. behavior, he left the seeds of ethology of imprinting, is the "innate release On the other hand, by emphasizing it firmly planted in Holland, and Groning- and by drawing the sociological and polit- mechanism." These were visualized as ical inferences I seem to have incuLrred en and Leiden continue as fertile re- genetically determined sensory mecha- the fanatical hostility of all those doc- search centers where aspiring students nisms that predispose an organism to trinaires whose ideology has tabooed the become versed in ethological discipline. be especially responsive to stimuli, from recognition of this fact. The idealistic One senses environmental imprinting in environment or from companions, and vitalistic philosophers to whom the Tinbergen's choice of research sites the belief in the absolute fieedom of the hu- that have assumed special valence in man will makes the assuLmption of huLman while he was at Oxford. The sands of the course of evolution of behavioral intolerable, as well as the be- the Farime Islands, Scolt Head, and adaptations for survival and reproduc- haviouristic psychologists who assert that most recently Ravenglass are the Huls- tion. They match behaviors evolved for all human behaviour is leairned, all seem horsts of England, permitting expan- social communication that g,enerate key to be blaming me for holding opinions sion of a research theme, already which in fact have been public propeity of -releasing schemata" or "sign stimuli," biological science since The Or-iginz of broached in Holland, on the social be- in turn evoking or guiding particular Spciejs was wvritten. havior of gulls, which led to funda- patterns of behavior in the respondent. mental insights into relationships be- A series of germinal papers over the The younlg Niko Tinbergen, an avid tween the behavior and ecology of next 15 years defined more sharply naturalist from his boyhood in the sand animnals. inadequacies of purely reflexive and dunes and pine forests of Hulshorst in From a theoretical framework estab- behavioristic theories of behavior, dem- Holland, saw the intricacies of insect lished in his 1942 paper on "an ob- onstrating that endogenous changes in behavior, specifically that of digger jectivistic study of the innate behavior 2 NOVEMBER 1973 465 of animals," Tinbergen and his col- Elizabeth, has since applied to the biology of a species. With von Frisch leagues concentrated on the stimulus genesis of autistic behavior in children. and Lorenz, Tinbergen has expressed control of behavior. In both laboratory Perhaps most distinctive in the the view that ethological demonstrations and field conditions, with butterflies, breadth of Tinbergen's research is his of ithe extraordinarily intricate inter- fish, and birds as subjects, he demon- frontal attack in the 1950's and '60's dependence of the structure and be- strated that, by using inanimate models on the problem of adaptiveness, which havior of organisms are relevant to whose properties are systematically was for so long the subject of judgments understanding the psychology of our varied, experimental demonstration can from zoologists' armchairs. However, own species. Indeed, this award might replace intuitive judgment in deciding Tinbergen and his associates demon- be taken not only as fitting recognition which elements of a stimulus complex strated that one can actually measure of the outstanding research accomplish- control a response. New insights into in animals preyed upon by others the ments of these three zoologists, but also how signaling behavior originates in cost or benefit of such traits as the as an appreciation of the need to re- the course of evolution were sum- color of a moth's wings or a bird's view the picture that we often seem marized, together with a general devel- eggs, the spines of a three-spined to have of human behavior as some- opment of ethological theory in his stickleback, habits such as a gull's re- thing quite outside nature, hardly sub- 1951 book, The Study of Instinct, which moval of egg shells from the nest after ject to the principles that mold the introduced many English-speaking read- young have hatched, or living on the biology, adaptability, and survival of ers to the subject. Many patterns of edge of a gull colony rather than in other organisms. social behavior, often with a signaling the center. The studies of gull behavior P. MARLER function, were understood as the out- illustrate beautifully how an ecological D. R. GRIFFIN come of social conflicts, a point of decision made in phylogeny can re- Rockefeller University, view that Tinbergen, with his wife verberate through many aspects of the New York 10021

Interstellar Molecules: New Theory of Formation from Gases

On the first of September, the 27th sions of ions and simpler molecules in eter. The fact that molecular emissions interstellar molecule was announced, a gas-seems particularly attractive as are quite intense reveals the presence this time sulfur monoxide. It was found a working hypothesis, especially in of a gas with a density of 104 to 107 with the same instrument used to detect conjunction with an older hypothesis molecules per cubic centimeter, but many other molecules-a relatively that some molecules are formed on lack of correlation between 21-cm small radio telescope operated by the dust grains. emissions and cloud positions rules out National Radio Astronomy Observatory The environment in which inter- atomic hydrogen, so the gas is thought at Kitt Peak, Arizona. That interstellar stellar molecules are found is far dif- to be mainly molecular hydrogen. molecules were discovered at all is a ferent from conditions on the earth, Radio measurements of other molecules story of near oversight on the part of even in the laboratory. Some species, indicate that the temperature is prob- astronomers (see box), but once they like CH, CH+, OH, H2, and atomic ably below 100°K, possibly as low as were found at millimeter wavelengths hydrogen, are found in very diffuse 20°K. The concentrations of the vari- (the radio wavelength the Kitt Peak clouds of gas. The density of atomic ous complex molecules, relative to that telescope detects so well) it seemed hydrogen in these clouds is typically of H2, are 10-3 to 10-4 for CO; 10-6 that every new observation turned up only 100 atoms per cubic centimeter; to 10-7 for NH3, OH, CS, CH30H, a new molecule. the clouds are transparent and per- and HCN; and even lower for the The pace of discovery was nearly a meated with intense ultraviolet light. rest. Because the concentrations of gallop from 1970 until about 1 year But most of the molecular species have complex molecules are so low, three ago. Since then no further molecules been found in a few huge clouds, to- body collisions, which contribute sig- except sulfur monoxide have been ward the center of the galaxy and in nificantly to chemical reactions at the found, apparently because the limit of the constellation Orion, that are opaque earth's surface, are completely incon- sensitivity of the Kitt Peak telescope- to visible or ultraviolet light. (Only sequential. (Only two body collisions with its present electronic configuration the radical OH has been reported in occur.) Therefore, many scientists -has been reached. In the meantime, another galaxy. The report has not so previously thought gas phase reactions the study of interstellar molecules has far been confirmed.) The clouds ap- were unimportant. entered a period of consolidation, in pear as dark patches in optical surveys Instead, until several years ago, most which the scientists who were earlier of the sky, and are often associated astronomers thought that interstellar quite busy simply reporting new find- with a bright nebula that is presumably molecules formed on the dust grains. ings are beginning to use their results created and illuminated by hot stars Either by physical adsorption or by to try to understand the dynamics of embedded in the cloud. the stronger process of chemical ad- interstellar clouds, and others are pro- Dense interstellar clouds are prin- sorption, gas particles could be bound posing detailed schemes for the chemis- cipally composed of dust grains and to grain surfaces, and despite the great try by which the interstellar molecules molecular hydrogen. The reddening of uncertainties about the processes that might have evolved. A chemical process starlight passing through the edges of occur on surfaces, William D. Watson that has been proposed recently-for- the clouds reveals the presence of dust at the University of Illinois, Urbana, mation of complex molecules by colli- grains, smaller than a micron in diam- and E. E. Salpeter at Cornell Univer- 466 SCENCE, VOL. 182