Donald R. Griffin

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Donald Redfield Griffin (born August 3, 1915 in Southampton (New York) , † November 7, 2003 in Lexington (Massachusetts) ) was an American zoologist. He made significant contributions to the navigation of animals, especially bats, where he was a pioneer in echolocation with Robert Galambos , and birds, and to the biophysics of sensors.

Life

Donald Griffin grew up in a rural area near Scarsdale, Westchester County ( New York on), where his parents had rented a farm house from the second half of the 18th century. His father, Henry Farrand Griffin (1880-1954) had studied languages ​​and literature at Yale University and initially worked as a reporter for the New York Evening Sun newspaper , but after the birth of his son found a lucrative livelihood as a copywriter with his own agency. His mother, Mary Whitney Redfield (1885–1968), made him familiar with natural history magazines as a child. In 1924, the family moved to Barnstable ( Massachusetts order), from where frequently out that he Boston Museum of Natural History (now the Boston Museum of Science ) visited. His monthly visits - the result of a lengthy orthodontic treatment - caught the eye of several curators , who gave him access to specialist publications at the age of 15.

Griffin had attended kindergarten and prestigious private primary school in Scarsdale, but the parents found the Barnstable Grammar School to be so little demanding and the teachers also opposed the theory of evolution that they took their son out of school after a year and gave him private lessons at home : the father taught English, history, Latin and French, a retired teacher taught mathematics and German. Two years later he was from the Phillips Academy added that had already visited his father, and in 1938 he transferred to Harvard College of Harvard University . In previous years he had already participated in a program for bird ringing, which aroused his curiosity to apply such markings to bats as well . He succeeded in doing this in the summer of 1932 with the small brown bat ( Myotis lucifugus ), as he reported in 1934 - in one of the first scientific publications on bat ringing - in the journal Journal of Mammalogy .

His experience in connection with the study of bird migration and the migration of bats led Griffin to join the group of Karl Lashley in Harward , who had already published in 1915 on the homing behavior of terns . With the physicist George W. Pierce , whose measuring devices he used, he demonstrated in 1938 that bats use ultrasonic sounds, and in collaboration with Robert Galambos he demonstrated their echolocation (a term he introduced in 1944) of obstacles with ultrasound.

Donald Griffin became a junior fellow at Harvard, was engaged in war-related research during World War II (also on the edge with the bizarre idea of ​​using bats as bomb carriers, which he judged impractical) and taught at Cornell University from 1946 . In 1953 he was again as a professor at Harvard University, where he was head of the Faculty of Biology from 1962 to 1965. From 1965 to 1989 he was at Rockefeller University , where he founded the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior.

In addition to research on bats, he continued to focus on the orientation of birds on migration, which he researched with airplanes, radar and altitude balloons. In his book Animal Awareness , he argued that animals, like humans, are conscious, thinking beings and not just automatons guided by instinct. Most recently he dealt with the communication of beavers.

He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences (1960), whose Daniel Giraud Elliot Medal he received in 1958, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1952) and the American Philosophical Society .

Fonts (selection)

  • Listening in the Dark. The acoustic orientation of bats and men. Yale University Press 1958
  • Echoes of Bat and Men. Anchor Books 1959
    • German edition: From echo to radar. See with sound waves. Collection of Nature and Knowledge, Kurt Desch 1959
  • Animal Structure and Function. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston 1962
  • Bird Migration: The Biology and Physics of Orientation Behavior. London: Heinemann 1965
  • Question of Animal Awareness: Evolutionary Continuity of Mental Experience. William Kaufmann, 1976, 2nd edition 1981
  • Animal Thinking. Harvard University Press 1984, 1990
  • Animal Minds: Beyond Cognition to Consciousness. University of Chicago Press 2001
  • "Windows on nonhuman minds" . In Michel Weber and Anderson Weekes (Eds.): Process Approaches to Consciousness in Psychology, Neuroscience, and Philosophy of Mind. Albany, New York, State University of New York Press, 2009, pp. 219ff
  • with Robert Galambos: The sensory basis of obstacle avoidance by flying bats. In: Journal of Experimental Zoology. Volume 86, 1941, pp. 481-506
  • with Robert Galambos: Obstacle avoidance by flying bats: the cries of bats. In: Journal of Experimental Zoology A. Volume 89, 1942, 475-490
  • with GW Pierce: Experimental determination of supersonic notes emitted by bats. In: Journal of Mammalogy. Volume 19, 1938, pp. 454-455

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Donald R. Griffin: Recollections of an Experimental Naturalist. In: Donald A. Dewsbury: Studying animal behavior. Autobiographies of the Founders. Chicago University Press, Chicago and London 1985, ISBN 978-0-226-14410-8 , pp. 121-142.
  2. ↑ Donald R. Griffin: Marking Bats. In: Journal of Mammalogy . Volume 15, No. 3, 1934, pp. 202-207, doi: 10.2307 / 1373851 .
  3. ^ John B. Watson and Karl S. Lashley: Homing and related activities of birds. In: Papers from the Department of Marine Biology of the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Volume 7, Carnegie Institution of Washington publication 1915, doi: 10.5962 / bhl.title.14554 .
  4. ↑ George W. Pierce and Donald R. Griffin: Experimental Determination of Supersonic Notes Emitted by Bats. In: Journal of Mammalogy. Volume 19, No. 4, 1938, pp. 454-455, doi: 10.2307 / 1374231 .
  5. ↑ Donald R. Griffin and Robert Galambos : The sensory basis of obstacle avoidance by flying bats. In: Journal of Experimental Zoology. Volume 86, No. 3, 1941, pp. 481-506, doi: 10.1002 / jez.1400860310 .
  6. ^ Member History: Donald R. Griffin. American Philosophical Society, accessed August 30, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Griffin, Donald R.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Griffin, Donald Redfield (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American zoologist
DATE OF BIRTH August 3, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Southampton (New York)
DATE OF DEATH November 7, 2003
Place of death Lexington, Massachusetts