Konrad Zacharias lorenz (1903–89) was one of the founders of ethology, an approach to the study of animal behaviour which originated as an offshoot of zoology, not psychology. lorenz was born and...

Konrad Zacharias lorenz (1903–89) was one of the founders of ethology, an approach to the study of animal behaviour which originated as an offshoot of zoology, not psychology. lorenz was born and educated in vienna; he attended the university of vienna, receiving both a medical degree and a Phd in zoology. The study of animal behaviour attracted him more than did the practice of medicine, and he began to focus on the role of genetic factors in animal behaviour. Together with nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch, he developed a new approach to the study of such behaviour, largely in natural settings. The approach became known as ethology, and culminated in the three sharing the 1973 nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. lorenz’s focus on natural settings rather than the laboratory was one of the factors which distinguished ethology from behaviourism as a method of studying behaviour. lorenz was also infl uenced by darwin’s work on evolution, and it led him to focus on inherited mechanisms in explaining behaviour. aggression to lorenz served an evolutionary function, promoting selective survival of the strongest individuals; in other words, it evolved as a biologically useful characteristic. his best-known book, On Aggression, drew a large popular audience for his ideas about both animal and human aggression, though it also attracted many critics. lorenz died in vienna at the age of 86.