Tinbergen was the youngest of three eminent brothers — both Jan and Nikolaas won Nobel Prizes, for economics and physiology or medicine, respectively.
He was appointed in 1949 by Gerard Baerends to the University of Groningen, where he developed important concepts in ethology. He was influenced to specialize in ethology by ethologist brother Niko with whom he was very close, but he also was influenced by Jan to introduce a level of quantitative analysis not previously utilized in ethology. Tinbergen committed suicide in 1955 at the age of 39. Tijs Tinbergen, his elder son, is a nature film director (imdb), whose 1994 film Gebiologeerd ("mesmerised") is a homage to his father . Tinbergen's younger son, Joost Tinbergen, is also a biologist.
Ethology is the scientific study of animal behaviour, usually with a focus on behaviour under natural conditions, and viewing behaviour as an evolutionarily adaptive trait. Behaviourism as a term also describes the scientific and objective study of animal behaviour, usually referring to measured responses to stimuli or to trained behavioural responses in a laboratory context, without a particular emphasis on evolutionary adaptivity. Throughout history, different naturalists have studied aspects of animal behaviour. Ethology has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th century, including Charles O. Whitman, Oskar Heinroth, and Wallace Craig. The modern discipline of ethology is generally considered to have begun during the 1930s with the work of Dutch biologist Nikolaas Tinbergen and Austrian biologists Konrad Lorenz and Karl von Frisch, the three recipients of the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Ethology combines laboratory and field science, with a strong relation to some other disciplines such as neuroanatomy, ecology, and evolutionary biology. Ethologists typically show interest in a behavioural process rather than in a particular animal group, and often study one type of behaviour, such as aggression, in a number of unrelated species.
Konrad Zacharias Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch. He is often regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior. He developed an approach that began with an earlier generation, including his teacher Oskar Heinroth.
Nikolaas "Niko" Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and ornithologist who shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz for their discoveries concerning the organization and elicitation of individual and social behavior patterns in animals. He is regarded as one of the founders of modern ethology, the study of animal behavior.
Jan Tinbergen was a Dutch economist who was awarded the first Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1969, which he shared with Ragnar Frisch for having developed and applied dynamic models for the analysis of economic processes. He is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of econometrics.
Hendrikus Johannes "Johan" Witteveen was a Dutch politician and economist who served as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from 1 September 1973 until 18 June 1978. He was a member of the People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD).
Neuroethology is the evolutionary and comparative approach to the study of animal behavior and its underlying mechanistic control by the nervous system. It is an interdisciplinary science that combines both neuroscience and ethology. A central theme of neuroethology, which differentiates it from other branches of neuroscience, is its focus on behaviors that have been favored by natural selection rather than on behaviors that are specific to a particular disease state or laboratory experiment.
Edward John Mostyn Bowlby, CBE, FBA, FRCP, FRCPsych was a British psychologist, psychiatrist, and psychoanalyst, notable for his interest in child development and for his pioneering work in attachment theory. A Review of General Psychology survey, published in 2002, ranked Bowlby as the 49th most cited psychologist of the 20th century.
Tjalling Charles Koopmans was a Dutch-American mathematician and economist. He was the joint winner with Leonid Kantorovich of the 1975 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on the theory of the optimum allocation of resources. Koopmans showed that on the basis of certain efficiency criteria, it is possible to make important deductions concerning optimum price systems.
Cognitive ethology is a branch of ethology concerned with the influence of conscious awareness and intention on the behaviour of an animal. Donald Griffin, a zoology professor in the United States, set up the foundations for researches in the cognitive awareness of animals within their habitats.
Tijs Tinbergen is a Dutch filmmaker.
William Homan Thorpe FRS was Professor of Animal Ethology at the University of Cambridge, and a significant British zoologist, ethologist and ornithologist. Together with Nikolaas Tinbergen, Patrick Bateson and Robert Hinde, Thorpe contributed to the growth and acceptance of behavioural biology in Great Britain.
Joost M. Tinbergen is a Dutch ecologist.
Johannes ("Jan") Hermannus van Dijk is a retired Dutch footballer and manager. He currently manages Hoofdklasse side Chevremont.
Tinbergen's four questions, named after Nikolaas Tinbergen, are complementary categories of explanations for animal behaviour. These are also commonly referred to as levels of analysis. It suggests that an integrative understanding of behaviour must include: ultimate (evolutionary) explanations, in particular the behaviour (1) adaptive function and (2) phylogenetic history; and the proximate explanations, in particular the (3) underlying physiological mechanisms and (4) ontogenetic/developmental history.
Berend "Bert" de Vries is a retired Dutch politician of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA) party and economist.
Human ethology is the study of human behavior. Ethology as a discipline is generally thought of as a sub-category of biology, though psychological theories have been developed based on ethological ideas. The bridging between biological sciences and social sciences creates an understanding of human ethology. The International Society for Human Ethology is dedicated to advancing the study and understanding of human ethology.
Serge Daan was a Dutch scientist, known for his significant contributions to the field of Chronobiology.
Gerardus Pieter Baerends was a Dutch biologist and one of the most important representatives of the so-called classical ethology in the tradition of Nikolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz. Baerends' behavioral working group was the first of this specialty in the Netherlands and is still regarded as one of the world's most prolific, since from it alone 43 theses emerged.
In ethology and cognitive ethology, the hawk/goose effect refers to a behavior observed in some young birds when another bird flies above them: if the flying bird is a goose, the young birds show no reaction, but if the flying bird is a hawk, the young birds either become more agitated or cower to reduce the danger. The observation that short-necked and long-tailed birds flying overhead caused alarm was noted by Oskar Heinroth. Friedrich Goethe conducted experiments with silhouettes to examine alarm reactions in 1937 and a more systematic study was conducted in the same year by Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen which is considered one of the classic experiments of ethology.
Ethology: International Journal of Behavioural Biology is a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal published by John Wiley & Sons. The journal is associated with the Ethologische Gesellschaft e.V. and the current editor-in-chief is Wolfgang Goymann. Previous editors-in-chief of Ethology were Wolfgang Wickler, Michael Taborsky and Jutta Schneider with Susan Foster.
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