Ethology, the biological study of behavior, emerged as a major new scientific discipline in the first two decades after World War II, building upon conceptual and methodological foundations established by Konrad Lorenz and Niko Tinbergen in the 1930s. In the post-war period, increasing numbers of researchers were drawn to the study of behavior, the primary institutional structures of the discipline of ethology were created, biennial international congresses served to define and guide the ethological community, and ethology's early conceptual foundations underwent elaboration and alteration. Dr. Burkhardt's goal is to describe and analyze ethology's development from 1945 to 1965. Taking a comparative and "ecological" approach, he is exploring how the guiding issues, concepts, and practices of ethology evolved as the original founders of the discipline and a new generation of investigators established research centers in Germany, Holland, Great Britain, and the United States and responded to the challenges and opportunities provided by contact with investigators from other disciplines. This study builds on Dr. Burkhardt's earlier research on animal behavior studies before World War II. This research is aimed at presenting the first systematic treatment of the history of ethology in this century.
