HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Walter F. Heiligenberg (January 31, 1938 – September 8, 1994) was a
German American German Americans (, ) are Americans who have full or partial German ancestry. According to the United States Census Bureau's figures from 2022, German Americans make up roughly 41 million people in the US, which is approximately 12% of the pop ...
scientist best known for his
neuroethology 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 (study of the nervous s ...
work on one of the best neurologically understood behavioral patterns in a vertebrate, ''
Eigenmannia ''Eigenmannia'' is a genus of fish in the family Sternopygidae (glass knifefishes) native to tropical and subtropical South America (south to the Río de la Plata Basin), and Panama.Peixoto, L.A.W., Dutra, G.M. & Wosiacki, W.B. (2015). The Elect ...
''. This weakly
electric fish An electric fish is any fish that can Bioelectrogenesis, generate electric fields, whether to sense things around them, for defence, or to stun prey. Most fish able to produce shocks are also electroreceptive, meaning that they can sense electric ...
and the neural basis for its
jamming avoidance response The jamming avoidance response is a behavior of some species of electric fish#Strongly and weakly electric fish, weakly electric fish. It occurs when two electric fish with wave discharges meet – if their discharge frequency, frequencies are v ...
behavioral process was the main focus of his research, and is fully explored in his 1991 book, "Neural Nets in Electric Fish." As an international scientist, he worked alongside other neuroethologists and researchers to further explain animal behavior in a comprehensive manner and "through the application of a strict analytical and quantitative method". The advancements within neuroethology today are still largely due to his influences, as his life was dedicated to researching that which could be applicable to "all complex nervous systems" and he " nvestigatedthe general principles of nature".


Life and death

Heiligenberg was born in
Berlin Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
,
Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...
, but moved to
Münster Münster (; ) is an independent city#Germany, independent city (''Kreisfreie Stadt'') in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is in the northern part of the state and is considered to be the cultural centre of the Westphalia region. It is also a ...
soon afterwards. He then spent part of his early adulthood in Munich and Seewiesen before ultimately moving to
San Diego, California San Diego ( , ) is a city on the Pacific coast of Southern California, adjacent to the Mexico–United States border. With a population of over 1.4 million, it is the List of United States cities by population, eighth-most populous city in t ...
, in 1972. On September 8, 1994, Heiligenberg was killed in the crash of
USAir Flight 427 USAir Flight 427 was a scheduled flight from Chicago's O'Hare International Airport to Palm Beach International Airport, Florida, with a stopover at Pittsburgh International Airport. On Thursday, September 8, 1994, the Boeing 737-3B7 flying thi ...
while on his way to deliver a lecture at the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
(Leaders in Their Fields 1994).


Scientific background and work

Heiligenberg's interest in ethology started at a young age, when he met
Konrad Lorenz Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Austrian ; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoology, zoologist, ethology, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von ...
, one of the founders of modern
ethology Ethology is a branch of zoology that studies the behavior, behaviour of non-human animals. It has its scientific roots in the work of Charles Darwin and of American and German ornithology, ornithologists of the late 19th and early 20th cen ...
and head of a
Max Planck Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck (; ; 23 April 1858 – 4 October 1947) was a German Theoretical physics, theoretical physicist whose discovery of energy quantum, quanta won him the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1918. Planck made many substantial con ...
research group, in 1953. Through Lorenz's influence, his interest in fish and animal behavior thrived even before entering college. He initially entered the
University of Münster The University of Münster (, until 2023 , WWU) is a public research university located in the city of Münster, North Rhine-Westphalia in Germany. With more than 43,000 students and over 120 fields of study in 15 departments, it is Germany's ...
in 1958, but transferred to the
University of Munich The Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (simply University of Munich, LMU or LMU Munich; ) is a public university, public research university in Munich, Bavaria, Germany. Originally established as the University of Ingolstadt in 1472 by Duke ...
after Lorenz and fellow neuroethologist
Erich von Holst Erich Walther von Holst (28 November 1908 – 26 May 1962) was a German behavioral physiologist who was a Baltic German native of Riga, Livonia and was related to historian Hermann Eduard von Holst (1841–1904). In the 1950s he founded ...
established the
Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology The former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology was located in Bulldern, Westphalia, Germany, moved to Seewiesen in 1957. It was one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). Background A working group was fo ...
in a city approximately 20 miles from Munich, in Seewiesen (Bullock et al. 1995). Between these two colleges, his studies were spread between
botany Botany, also called plant science, is the branch of natural science and biology studying plants, especially Plant anatomy, their anatomy, Plant taxonomy, taxonomy, and Plant ecology, ecology. A botanist or plant scientist is a scientist who s ...
,
zoology Zoology ( , ) is the scientific study of animals. Its studies include the anatomy, structure, embryology, Biological classification, classification, Ethology, habits, and distribution of all animals, both living and extinction, extinct, and ...
,
physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
, and
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
, whose influence is clearly seen in his quantitative approaches in later research towards the neural bases of animal behavior. It was here that his ethological foundation was laid, as he "performed a quantitative analysis of the effect of motivational factors on the occurrence of various social behavioral patterns" through his doctoral thesis, "On causation of Behavioral Patterns in Cichlid Fish," which was completed in 1963 under Lorenz and Hansjochem Autrum, a sensory physiologist.


Academic career

His research continued to focus on the motivational behaviors of chiclid fish and
cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...
s in Seewiesen, successfully conducting a quantitative demonstration of the "law of heterogeneous summation," whose model predicted that "different features of a stimulation in a edto an independent behavioral stimulation in the receiver". Much of his work eventually led to the testing and production of evidence contrary to Lorenz's theory of the psychohydraulic model of motivation (specifically aggression) using male Chiclidae. Such was his willingness to venture into new neuroethological territories despite the established research at the time. His status as neuroethologist was further established when he moved to the
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) is the center for oceanography and Earth science at the University of California, San Diego. Its main campus is located in La Jolla, with additional facilities in Point Loma. Founded in 1903 and incorpo ...
at the
University of California, San Diego The University of California, San Diego (UC San Diego in communications material, formerly and colloquially UCSD) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in San Diego, California, United States. Es ...
, in 1972 as a post-doctoral investigator in Theodore Holmes Bullock's laboratory. His appointment to faculty in 1973, then to the position of full professor of behavioral physiology in 1977 followed his decision to decline the position of Director at the
Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology The former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology was located in Bulldern, Westphalia, Germany, moved to Seewiesen in 1957. It was one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). Background A working group was fo ...
in Seewiesen. His work at UCSD led him to publish widely about the neural bases of the jamming avoidance response, the first vertebrate example of an entire behavioral pattern that could be explained from sensory input to motor output. The built-in electric organ of ''Eigennmania'' that gave millivolt discharges was found to be adaptive for location of external objects and for communication (electrolocation and electrocommunication, respectively). Heiligenberg continued to study potentially more complex social behaviors, including courtship and aggressive encounters. The decades' worth of work was expressed through the book, ''Neural Nets in Electric Fish'', in which he explains observed phenomena of the
jamming avoidance response The jamming avoidance response is a behavior of some species of electric fish#Strongly and weakly electric fish, weakly electric fish. It occurs when two electric fish with wave discharges meet – if their discharge frequency, frequencies are v ...
, the nature of the electrical stimulus, the neural networks triggering them, and even explains it with respect to systems for other senses and in other species. His inclination to successfully use computational methods and modeling made him a pioneer in the neuroethology community.


Heiligenberg lab

During Heiligenberg's time at Scripps, he directed his fellow researchers and graduate students toward exploring behavioral phenomena through neuroethological methods and interests. His openness with his graduate students was notable, as he encouraged them not only to use and learn new techniques and other interests in different fields, but was also willing to allow them independently started projects and papers published without being named as a co-author. More importantly, his personal work employed the useful aspects of both neurophysiology and ethology, whose approaches addressed the single-unit interactions and more complicated patterned processes, respectively. In his own words, his methodology was based on the belief that it would be "most promising if the behavior investigated is sufficiently simple to readily allow neurophysiological interpretations. Particularly suitable are those patterns of behavior which still function while under the restricted condition of neurophysiological experiments, since stimulus input and behavioral output can immediately be related to neuronal events".


Publications

A list of the journal articles and abstracts he helped to author at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography from 1960 to 1994, can be accessed through http://www.cnl.salk.edu/~kt/heiligref.html . There is a complete list of Heiligenberg lab publications up to 2000 in Zupanc and Bullock's 2006 article "Walter Heiligenberg: the jamming avoidance response and beyond?".


Honors

Throughout Heiligenberg's lifetime, his dedication and groundbreaking research made him a leader in the neuroethology community. At the time of his death, he had already received the Javits Award from the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Stroke, the Merit Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, and was a member of the Bavarian Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and also of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina. Heiligenberg also received the David Sparks Prize for systems neurophysiology and served as senior editor of the ''Journal of Comparative Physiology'' (Leaders in Their Fields 1994), an added honor to being an editor for the journal since 1981. A student travel award of the International Society of Neuroethology is named in his honor.


See also

*
Neuroethology 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 (study of the nervous s ...
*
Konrad Lorenz Konrad Zacharias Lorenz (Austrian ; 7 November 1903 – 27 February 1989) was an Austrian zoology, zoologist, ethology, ethologist, and ornithologist. He shared the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von ...
*
Erich von Holst Erich Walther von Holst (28 November 1908 – 26 May 1962) was a German behavioral physiologist who was a Baltic German native of Riga, Livonia and was related to historian Hermann Eduard von Holst (1841–1904). In the 1950s he founded ...
* Theodore Holmes Bullock *
Cichlid Cichlids () are a large, diverse, and widespread family of percomorph fish in the family Cichlidae, order Cichliformes. At least 1,760 species have been scientifically described, making it one of the largest vertebrate families, with on ...
*
Electric fish An electric fish is any fish that can Bioelectrogenesis, generate electric fields, whether to sense things around them, for defence, or to stun prey. Most fish able to produce shocks are also electroreceptive, meaning that they can sense electric ...
*
Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology The former Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology was located in Bulldern, Westphalia, Germany, moved to Seewiesen in 1957. It was one of 80 institutes in the Max Planck Society (Max Planck Gesellschaft). Background A working group was fo ...
*
Scripps Institution of Oceanography Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) is the center for oceanography and Earth science at the University of California, San Diego. Its main campus is located in La Jolla, with additional facilities in Point Loma. Founded in 1903 and incorpo ...


References


Sources

* * * * * * * * * * * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Heiligenberg, Walter 1938 births 1994 deaths Accidental deaths in Pennsylvania German physiologists Neuroethology Scientists from Berlin Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1994 Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States Members of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina