Masakazu Konishi

Masakazu "Mark" Konishi ( Japanese 小 西 正 一 , Konishi Masakazu ; born February 17, 1933 in Kyōto , Japan ; † July 23, 2020 ) was a Japanese -American ethologist and neurophysiologist . He was Professor of Behavioral Biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena , California .

Life

Konishi graduated from Hokkaidō University in Sapporo , Japan , with a bachelor's degree in 1956 and a master's degree in 1958 ( shūshi ). In 1963 he obtained a Ph.D. from Peter R. Marler. at the University of California, Berkeley in Berkeley , California . As a postdoctoral fellow he worked as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen and with Otto Detlev Creutzfeldt at the Department of Experimental Neurophysiology at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich. In 1965 he was Assistant Professor of Biology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison in Madison , Wisconsin , and in 1966 at Princeton University in Princeton , New Jersey , and in 1970 Associate Professor there . In 1975 he received a professorship in biology at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in Pasadena , California, in 1980 for behavioral biology . In 1983, Konishi became a US citizen. He retired in 2013.

Act

Konishi is considered a leader in the connection between ethology and neurophysiology , neuroethology . He was able to show the crucial importance of auditory feedback when learning bird song, to explain the role of audio frequency and spatial resolution in the hunter - prey ratio in the barn owl (with Eric Knudsen from 1978) and discovered the role of hormones in the differentiation of the vocal centers in the male bird brain ( zebra finch ).

Awards (selection)

• 1979 membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• 1985 membership in the National Academy of Sciences
• 1990 International Prize for Biology
• 1999 Neuronal Plasticity Prize of the Fondation Ipsen , together with Fernando Nottebohm and Peter R. Marler
• 2004 Rosenstiel Award , together with Fernando Nottebohm and Peter R. Marler
• 2004 Ralph W. Gerard Prize
• 2005 Gruber Prize for Neuroscience

Web links

• Masakazu Konishi at the California Institute of Technology (caltech.edu); accessed on February 7, 2016
• Autobiography (PDF, 230 kB) ( Memento from September 15, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) at sfn.org

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Lori Dajose: Mark Konishi, Renowned Caltech Neuroethologist, Dies at 87. Retrieved July 25, 2020 . 
2. ↑ Book of Members 1780 – present, Chapter K. (PDF; 670 kB) In: American Academy of Arts and Sciences (amacad.org). Retrieved April 30, 2019 . 
3. ↑ Professor Dr. Masakazu Konishi (PDF, 2.4 MB) at jsps.go.jp; Retrieved June 13, 2011
4. ^ Neurosciences. (No longer available online.) In: fondation-ipsen.org. Archived from the original on July 21, 2017 ; accessed on February 6, 2016 . 
5. ^ Past Winners - Rosenstiel Award - Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center - Brandeis University. In: brandeis.edu. Retrieved January 23, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Masakazu Konishi at gruberprizes.org; Retrieved June 13, 2011