John Dittami

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John Philip Dittami (born August 24, 1949 in Medford , Massachusetts ; † August 27, 2014 in Vienna ) was an American behavioral biologist living in Austria and professor at the University of Vienna . In an obituary from the Faculty of Life Sciences, it was said that he understood how to “ underpin the theories of sociobiology with endocrinological and physiological foundations” and to establish “behavioral endocrinological methods at the faculty, the further development of which he successfully promoted” combined with methods of non-invasive hormone determination in wild and zoo animals.

Career

John Dittami was the sixth of twelve children of Italian immigrants to the United States. He grew up in Sherborn (Massachusetts), attended Marian High School and initially studied chemistry and medicine at Tufts University in Boston . During this time he played as a bass guitarist in various blues bands, but also as a back-up player with later celebrities such as Sting or the founders of Chicago . In the summer of 1974 Dittami came to Europe to do a marine biology internship at the Naples Zoological Station . Landed in Frankfurt am Main , he and a friend decided to hike to Naples on foot . In the Austrian alpine foothills arrived, the two took by mistake the way into Almtal , instead of the leading south Kremstal , and met in Grünau on Konrad Lorenz , who had previously been awarded one year not only the Nobel Prize, but in the Almtal and the Konrad Lorenz Research Station had founded and experimented with trusting gray geese. In a commemorative publication on Lorenz's 85th birthday in 1988, Dittami wrote: “My personal acquaintance with Konrad Lorenz began in 1974 in Grünau, where I - like many students before me - raised geese. In retrospect, I see this time as a turning point in my life. ”In fact, Dittami gave up his previous subjects, turned to comparative behavioral research and finally wrote his doctoral thesis in biology at the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich ( PhD 1981).

From 1981 he was employed by the Max Planck Society , for whose Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology he set up a research site at Lake Nakuru in Kenya between 1981 and 1983 . In 1987 he completed his habilitation at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen , where he had previously taught for several years. In 1988 he was finally appointed professor of ethology at the University of Vienna, where he headed the department of behavioral biology until his retirement.

At the end of June 2013, a brain tumor was discovered in John Dittami, of which he died a year later.

Research topics

Initially, Dittami mainly dealt with the influence of hormones on the social behavior of various bird species, especially with biological rhythms , which was his specialty until the end. As a university lecturer, he later also studied neuroendocrinological studies on pair bonding in polygynous rodents, wolves, monkeys and, last but not least, humans. In addition to many other things, such as couple bonds, sociosexual orientation and stress research, towards the end of his work as a university lecturer he also dealt with sleep, consciousness and dreams in people.

From 1988 John Dittami was also head of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center in Grünau.

Fonts (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ In loving memory of John Dittami. On: medienportal.univie.ac.at , September 2014.
  2. ↑ In memoriam John Dittami (1949-2014). Obituary by the Faculty of Life Sciences at the University of Vienna on September 12, 2014.
  3. ^ Obituary in The Press , September 2014.
  4. ↑ In memoriam John Dittami. A collection of obituaries from some friends and colleagues. On: medienportal.univie.ac.at .
  5. ^ Obituary of the Konrad Lorenz Research Center of the University of Vienna .
  6. ↑ John Dittami in Wolfgang Schleidt (ed.): The circle around Konrad Lorenz. Ideas, hypotheses, views. Parey, Berlin and Hamburg 1988, p. 13, ISBN 3-489-63336-9 .
  7. ↑ John Dittami et al .: Sex differences in the reactions to sleeping in pairs versus sleeping alone in humans. In: Sleep and Biological Rhythms. Volume 5, No. 4, 2007, pp. 271-276, doi: 10.1111 / j.1479-8425.2007.00320.x .
    Behavioral biology: women sleep better without a man - internal clock ticks differently. On: idw-online.de from May 21, 2007.
personal data
SURNAME Dittami, John
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dittami, John Philip
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American behavioral scientist in Austria
DATE OF BIRTH August 24, 1949
PLACE OF BIRTH Medford, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH August 27, 2014
Place of death Vienna