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<html> <head> <title>Nikolaas Tinbergen</title> <meta name="googlebot" content="noodp"> <meta name="robots" content="noodp"> <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/silly-nndb-icon.png" /><style type="text/css">  </style></head> <body bgcolor=#ffffff> <center> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr><td valign=top><table width=550 cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0><tr><td bgcolor=white><table width="100%" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" background="/nndb.gif"> <tr> <td rowspan="2" align="left" valign="top"><a href="http://www.nndb.com/"><img src="/title.gif" width="260" height="50" border=0 alt="NNDB"></a></td> <td><table width="100%" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="6"> <tr align="center"> <td width="25%" nowrap>This is a beta version of NNDB</td> </tr> </table></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="right" valign="middle"> <form action="http://search.nndb.com/search/nndb.cgi" method="get"> <input type="hidden" name="nndb" value="1"></input> Search: <select name="omenu"> <option value="unspecified" selected>All Names</option> <option value="living">Living people</option> <option value="dead">Dead people</option> <option value="bands">Band Names</option> <option value="books">Book Titles</option> <option value="movies">Movie Titles</option> <option value="fulltext">Full Text</option> </select> for <input name="query" value="" size=24 maxlength=96> <input type=submit value="Search"> </form></td> </tr> </table>        </td></tr><tr><td bgcolor=red height=2></td></tr><map name=fool><area coords="102,0,240,14" href="/people/800/000113461/bibliography/" alt="bibliography"></map><tr bgcolor=F0F0F0><td bgcolor=F0F0F0 style="padding: 0px 15px 15px 15px;"><img src="/red-profile-2.gif" align="right" height=15 width=240 border=0 usemap=#fool> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 width=100%><tr><td bgcolor=F0F0F0>Nikolaas TinbergenBorn: <a href="/lists/623/000106305/" class=proflink>15-Apr</a>-<a href="/lists/906/000105591/" class=proflink>1907</a> Birthplace: <a href="/geo/832/000069625/" class=proflink>The Hague, Netherlands</a> Died: <a href="/lists/242/000106921/" class=proflink>21-Dec</a>-<a href="/lists/498/000106180/" class=proflink>1988</a> Location of death: <a href="/geo/860/000069653/" class=proflink>Oxford, Oxfordshire, England</a> Cause of death: <a href="/lists/328/000069121/" class=proflink>Stroke</a> Gender: Male Race or Ethnicity: White Sexual orientation: Straight Occupation: <a href="/lists/879/000096591/" class=proflink>Zoologist</a>Nationality: England Executive summary: Grand Master of EthologyMilitary service: Nazi Detention (1942-45)Nikolaas Tinbergen was a Dutch-born British biologist who, together with <a href="/people/757/000091484/">Konrad Lorenz</a>, founded modern ethology and shared the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1973. His best known work delved into the response processes of fishes, gulls, and wasps, and in his 1932 doctoral thesis he showed how bee-killer wasps use geographical landmarks to orientate themselves. In collaboration with Lorenz, Tinbergen proposed that what might appear to be the response of individuals to environmental factors is, in many species, instead caused by an animal's genetics and imprinted impulses. Their work established the concept of a fixed-action pattern, a repeated, distinct set of movements or behaviors triggered by events in the animal's environment, a characteristic which Tinbergen and Lorenz held was shared by all members of a species, including the human species. In 1942, Tinbergen joined numerous faculty members at the University of Leiden in signing a letter protesting the Nazis' occupation of Holland, for which he was almost immediately arrested and imprisoned in a Nazi prison camp. He was released and returned to Leiden two years later, where he was promoted to full professor in 1947. He found the increased administrative duties of his new position distasteful, and in 1949 he took a lower-profile and lower-paying position as a lecturer and researcher at Oxford University, where he spent the rest of his career and became a British subject in 1955. He also worked as a maker or nature films, wrote children's books, and studied autistic behavior in children. In his work on the latter topic, he asserted that autism may be made more likely by certain behavior by a child's parents, a finding still considered controversial. His students included <a href="/people/281/000024209/">Richard Dawkins</a>. His brother, <a href="/people/799/000113460/">Jan Tinbergen</a>, won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1969. Father: Dirk Cornelis Tinbergen (school principal, b. 1874) Mother: Jeannette van Eek Brother: <a href="/people/799/000113460/">Jan Tinbergen</a> (economist, b. 12-Apr-1903, d. 9-Jun-1994) Brother: Luuk Tinbergen (ornithologist, b. 7-Sep-1916, d. 1-Sep-1955) Wife: Elisabeth Rutten ("Lies", b. 1912, m. 14-Apr-1932, d. 1990, three daughters, two sons)     High School: Second High School, The Hague, Netherlands (1928)     University: <a href="/edu/787/000071574/">PhD Zoology, University of Leiden (1932)</a>     Scholar: <a href="/edu/787/000071574/">Biology, University of Leiden (1932-36)</a>     Lecturer: <a href="/edu/787/000071574/">Experimental Zoology, University of Leiden (1936-47)</a>     Professor: <a href="/edu/787/000071574/">University of Leiden (1947-49)</a>     Lecturer: <a href="/edu/486/000068282/">Zoology, Wolfson College, Oxford University (1949-66)</a>     Professor: <a href="/edu/486/000068282/">Animal Behavior, Wolfson College, Oxford University (1966-74)</a>     <a href="/honors/214/000068010/">Nobel Prize for Medicine</a> 1973 (with <a href="/people/801/000113462/">Karl von Frisch</a> and <a href="/people/757/000091484/">Konrad Lorenz</a>)     Swammerdam Medal 1973     Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences Foreign Member, 1964     <a href="/org/793/000055628/">Royal Society</a> 1962     Behaviour Journal Co-Founder, 1948     <a href="/event/114/000164619/">Taken Prisoner of War</a> by Nazis, WWII, 9-Sep-1942 to 11-Sep-1945     <a href="/event/409/000085154/">Naturalized UK Citizen</a> 1955     <a href="/event/187/000071971/">Stroke</a> 21-Dec-1988 (fatal)     <a href="/lists/507/000048363/">Dutch Ancestry</a> Author of books: The Study of Instinct (<tt>1951</tt>) The Herring Gull's World (<tt>1953</tt>) Social Behavior in Animals (<tt>1953</tt>) Curious Naturalists (<tt>1958</tt>) Animal Behavior (<tt>1965</tt>) The Animal in Its World: Explorations of an Ethologist, 1932-1972 (<tt>1972-73</tt>, 2 vols.) Early Childhood Autism: An Ethological Approach (<tt>1972</tt>, with Elisabeth A. Tinbergen) Autistic Children: New Hope for A Cure (<tt>1986</tt>, with Elisabeth A. Tinbergen) <table> <tr> <td align=right valign=middle style="padding-right: 5px;">New! <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/" class="fotmlink" style="font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; color: #dd0000;">NNDB MAPPER</a></td> <td valign=middle align=right style="border-left: 1px solid #bbb; padding-left: 5px;">Create a map starting with</td> <td valign=middle align=right><a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=113461"><img src="/man.gif" border=0 style="padding: 2px;"></a></td> <td align=left valign=middle> <a href="http://mapper.nndb.com/start/?id=113461">Nikolaas Tinbergen</a></td> </tr> </table> Requires Flash 7+ and Javascript. 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