Volker Sommer

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Volker Sommer during a lecture at the Senckenberg Biodiversity and Climate Research Center (2016)

Volker Sommer (born June 2, 1954 in Holzhausen near Kassel ) is a German anthropologist , primatologist and professor of evolutionary anthropology at University College London (UCL).

Life

During his school days in 1973, Volker Sommer became the national winner at Jugend forscht with a thesis on the social behavior of caterpillars . After graduating from high school, he studied biology , chemistry and theology in Göttingen, Marburg, Berlin and Hamburg. Since 1981 he has been involved in a long-term field study on temple monkeys in India . From 1986 to 1988 he was a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation . In 1985, Sommer received his doctorate and completed his habilitation in 1990. From 1990, he took part in a multi-year study of gibbons in the Thai rainforest . He then initially taught as a private lecturer in anthropology and primatology at the University of Göttingen . He was also a Heisenberg Fellow of the German Research Foundation from 1991 to 1996 and a research fellow at the University of California in Davis .

Since 1996, Sommer has held the Chair of Evolutionary Anthropology at University College (UCL) in London . Since 1999 he has been leading a research project on chimpanzees in the Nigerian mountain forest .

To date, he has published around a hundred papers on the biology of social and sexual behavior and on cultural studies as well as fiction texts. His writings have been translated into various languages, including Italian , Spanish , English , Walloon , Korean and Hindi . Sommer writes regularly for various magazines such as Geo , Stern , FAZ , Natur , Kosmos , Die Zeit , Der Spiegel , Die Welt , Die Weltwoche and NZZ . He is also involved in radio, film and television productions, is often invited to panel discussions and is a busy speaker.

Sommer is a member of the scientific advisory board of the Giordano Bruno Foundation .

Works (selection)

Monographs

  • Nectar of immortality. Poetic Approach to India . Radius-Verlag, Stuttgart 1983, ISBN 3-87173-650-3 .
  • Yeti. A story . Stuttgart 1986.
  • The Rose. Unfolding of a symbol . Cologne 1988; (with Gerd Heinz-Mohr ).
  • The monkeys. Our wild relatives . Hamburg 1989.
  • Against nature? Homosexuality and evolution . Munich 1990.
  • Praise the lie. Deception and self-deception in animals and humans . Munich 1992, ISBN 3-423-30415-4 .
  • Festivals - myths - rituals. Why the peoples celebrate . Hamburg 1992.
  • Holy egoists. The sociobiology of Indian temple monkeys . Munich 1996.
  • The great apes. Orangutans, gorillas, bonobos, chimpanzees . Munich 1998; (with Karl Ammann).
  • From humans and other animals. Essays on evolutionary biology . Stuttgart 1999.
  • The green space. A poem from the rainforest . Stuttgart 2002.
  • Think Darwinian. Horizons of evolutionary biology . S. Hirzel Verlag, Stuttgart 2007.
  • Chimpanzee country; Wild life in Africa . CH Beck 2008, ISBN 978-3-406-56891-6 .

Editorships

  • Human Biology , Heidelberg 1996.

Audio books

  • Already knew? Scientists explain the world to children - Part 1: Words under the microscope / Why monkeys can lie; Audio CD (with Werner Schäfer).

Filmography (selection)

  • Fascination of knowledge - strategies of love - fathers, mothers, stone age babies . Film by Felix Heidinger and Volker Sommer produced for Bayerisches Fernsehen.

Movie

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Website of the Gashaka Primate Project ; English, accessed May 1, 2011.
  2. ^ Website of the Giordano Bruno Foundation; Retrieved October 11, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Summer, Volker
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German anthropologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 2, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Holzhausen near Kassel