Randolf Menzel
Randolf Menzel (born June 7, 1940 in Marienbad , Sudetenland ) is a German zoologist and neurobiologist. Menzel has been head of the neurobiological institute at the Free University of Berlin since 1976 . He has been a professor emeritus since 2008
Life
Menzel studied biology , chemistry and physics in Tübingen and Frankfurt am Main . In 1967 he wrote his award-winning dissertation on color learning in bees . In 1972 he became a professor at the Zoological Institute of the TH Darmstadt before he accepted a call to the Institute of Neurobiology at the Free University of Berlin in 1976 . Menzel is considered one of the world's leading researchers on the nervous system of bees. His work has won him numerous prizes, including a. the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation . Menzel is also a founding member of the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences . Menzel is married and has four children.
Act
The focus of Menzel's work is neuroscientific research into memory . As the neuroscientific access to memory becomes more difficult with increasing complexity of the nervous system, Menzel mainly works on the memory of honeybees. The knowledge acquired here should also contribute to an understanding of human memory.
To find nectar and pollen , the location of flowers in bees' memories is associated with certain scents and colors. The information is passed on via the waggle dance . As in humans, different forms of memory can be distinguished. Menzel assumes a short-term, a medium-term and two forms of long-term memory. Menzel's aim is to locate this information stored in the memory neuronally and to clarify the principles of memory storage. Since the neural principles of memory storage seem to be cross-species, the results of Menzel's work are also relevant to the study of human memory.
Honors, awards and memberships
- Hörlein Prize from the Association of German Biologists (1961)
- Annual Prize of the University of Frankfurt (1967 Dissertation Prize)
- Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (1991)
- Member of the Academia Europaea (1992)
- Member of the Leopoldina (1996)
- Karl Ritter von Frisch Medal of the German Zoological Society (2004)
- Honorary doctorate from Paul Sabatier University , Toulouse / France (2007)
- Research award of the Fondation Fyssen 2008, for his outstanding work on the cognitive abilities of honeybees
- Elected member of EMBO (2014)
- Elected Senior Fellow of the Zukunftskolleg at the University of Konstanz (2015)
See also
Fonts
- Randolf Menzel, Matthias Eckoldt : "The intelligence of bees", Munich, KNAUS Verlag 2016, ISBN 978-3813506655
- Josef Dudel, Randolf Menzel, Robert F. Schmidt : Neuroscience , Berlin, Springer-Verlag 1996, ISBN 3-540-41335-9
- Randolf Menzel, Alison Mercer (eds.): Neurobiology and Behavior of Honeybees , Berlin, Springer-Verlag, 1987, ISBN 3-540-16950-4
Web links
- Literature by and about Randolf Menzel in the catalog of the German National Library
- Homepage of Menzel's working group
Individual evidence
- ^ Membership directory: Randolf Menzel. Academia Europaea, accessed July 6, 2017 .
- ↑ Member entry of Randolf Menzel (with CV) at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on July 18, 2016.
- ↑ EMBO enlarges its membership for 50th anniversary. Press release from May 8, 2014 at the Science Information Service (idw-online.de)
- ↑ www.zukunftskolleg.uni-konstanz.de
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Menzel, Randolf |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | German neurobiologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | June 7, 1940 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Marienbad |