Nikolaas Tinbergen

Nikolaas Tinbergen was a Dutch biologist and one of the founders of ethology, the study of animal behavior. He is renowned for his work in understanding how behaviors evolve, their purpose, and the mechanisms driving them. Tinbergen formulated four key questions to analyze behavior: its causation, development, evolution, and function. His research included studying various species, such as birds and insects, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 for his contributions to the field, emphasizing the importance of both instinct and learning in animal behavior.