The 1973 Nobel Prize for Physiology Or Medicine
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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 bees or Medicine has been awarded jointly ments in the 1920's settled in the af- is swarming, scouts fly out from the to three zoologists: Karl von Frisch, 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; Konrad Lorenz, 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 Nikolaas Tinbergen, 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 bee 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 ethology. 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- waggle dance 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 Martin Lindauer, 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 wasps 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 "instinct", of ethology into full flower.