John Paul Scott (behavioral biologist)

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John Paul Scott (born December 17, 1909 in Kansas City (Missouri) , USA , † March 26, 2000 in Bowling Green , Ohio ) was an American behavioral geneticist and biologist . From 1965 until his retirement he taught as a professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green (Ohio) .

Life

After graduating from elementary school, Scott attended University Training School and then high school in Laramie , Wyoming , since his father, parasitologist John W. Scott, was a professor of zoology at the University of Wyoming . His mother was also a scientist, she had studied chemistry at the University of Chicago . Shortly before his 18th birthday, he began his studies at the University of Wyoming, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in zoology with minor subjects in English and psychology in 1930 . In the same year he moved from the USA to England, entered Lincoln College in Oxford and enrolled in the Honor School of Natural Science at the University of Oxford in zoology, where he obtained his master's degree in 1932. He then returned to the USA with a scholarship to the University of Chicago, where he studied a. a. with the ecologist Warder Clyde Allee and received his doctorate in 1935 with Sewall Wright in genetics on the development of embryos and the phenomenon of polydactyly in guinea pigs .

In 1935, in the midst of the Great Depression , Scott did not have a postdoctoral position at a university, but he was appointed associate professor and head of the zoology department at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana , a well-funded, private training facility for the bachelor's degree. Degree for male students, employed. The main focus of the lecturers was teaching, research was only tolerated, but Scott was given rooms in which he was allowed to keep colonies of mice and rats and analyze their different social behavior for each breed line. At the same time he dealt with the question of the extent to which it is possible to apply methods of biology to human social behavior , in the sense of an interdisciplinary biosociology or - preferred by him - sociobiology . In order to acquire more in-depth knowledge, he took a sabbatical in 1938/39 , went to Boston and there began months of self-study in the social sciences in the libraries of Harvard University . He returned to Wabash College on September 1, 1939, the day the German Wehrmacht attacked Poland . Because of his age and three children, he was not drafted into military service. Under the influence of World War II , he wrote a book on aggression in animals and humans, but it was rejected by the editor of the University of Chicago Press . The text later formed the basis for his book Aggression , published by the same publisher in 1958, and his textbook Animal Behavior was also published in 1958 . The findings of numerous own studies were included in both books. a. Studies on the inheritance of aggressive behavior and the influence of defeat in ranking battles on the future behavior of mice.

In 1945 Scott received an offer to move to the Jackson Laboratory in Bar Harbor , where he stayed until 1965. From 1965 until his retirement in 1980, he finally worked as a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, most recently as Regents Professor of Psychology . In addition to studies on rodents, he now devoted himself intensively to the inheritance of behavior in domestic dogs.

Since June 1933, John Paul Scott was married to the children's author Sally Scott (1909–1978), whose mother, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, was an author and civil rights activist. Scott and his future wife had met at Oxford, where Sally had studied English literature. The couple had four children.

Fonts (selection)

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Paul Scott. Obituary on the server of the Bowling Green State University <. ( Memento from March 15, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ^ John Paul Scott: Investigative Behavior: Toward a Science of Sociality. 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. 388-429, here: p. 396.
  3. ^ The Life of JP Scott. Obituary by Donald A. Dewsbury on bgsu.edu, May 1, 2000.
  4. ^ John Paul Scott, Investigative Behavior: Toward a Science of Sociality, 404.
personal data
SURNAME Scott, John Paul
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American behavioral geneticist and psychologist
DATE OF BIRTH December 17, 1909
PLACE OF BIRTH Kansas City, Missouri , USA
DATE OF DEATH March 26, 2000
Place of death Bowling Green , Ohio