Konrad Lorenz was an Austrian zoologist whose specialty, the biological origins of social behavior, is of major interest to psychologists. Lorenz pioneered in the direct study of animal behavior and was the founder of modern ethology (the study of animals in their natural surroundings). He received the Nobel Prize for physiology in 1973 for his research on instinctive behavior patterns and on imprinting---the process through which an animal very early in life acquires a social bond, usually with its parents, that enables it to become attached to other members of its own species. His major book, "On Aggression" (1963), was attacked by many anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists,… who maintained that Lorenz's claim that aggression is inborn means that it cannot be controlled. His supporters countered that Lorenz never stated that inborn traits could not be changed. Lorenz's work continues to play a key role in this contemporary version of the nature-nurture debate.
Sir Julian Huxley, elder brother of novelist Aldous Huxley, was born in London, the eldest son of Leonard Huxley, biographer and historian; "the nephew of Mrs. Humphrey Ward"; the grand nephew of Matthew Arnold; and the grandson of the great scientist Thomas Henry Huxley. Julian Huxley began gathering honors while at Balliol College, and Oxford University, where he lectured on zoology for two years (1910--1912). One of the leading popularizers of science, he was a gifted master of lucid prose and wrote innumerable articles and books, many on science for the layperson on subjects ranging from "the evolutionary conception of God to the politics of ants." Huxley is credited with coining the… term ethology to indicate the science of animal behavior. He advocated a scientific humanism as a substitute for the mysticism of the past. Huxley was interested in politics, as well as science, serving as the first director-general of UNESCO (1946--48). In January 1960, Huxley received the New York University Medal following his lecture entitled "Evolution in Our Time." "My final belief is life," was his stated philosophy. .