Who is Niko Tinbergen?

Niko Tinbergen was a Dutch scientist who studied biology and ornithology. He was born on April 15, 1907 and died on Dec. 21, 1988. During his life, he studied different behavioral patterns in animals.

Tinbergen is most famous for winning the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine along with Karl von Frisch and Konrad Lorenz in 1973. The three scientists studied the organization of individual and social behavior patterns in animals. Tinbergen and his colleagues specifically studied genetically programmed behaviors and determined their origins and mutations. Their work focused on fish, insects and birds, and it was tied to the ability to understand certain mechanisms of psychiatric diseases in humans.