In order to understand the issue of the need to draw up a document,...
- (Frisch) (1886 1982), German physiologist, ethologist. He studied the sense organs of fish and insects and the instinctive behavior of animals. Deciphered the mechanism of information transmission by bees (“dancing bees”). Nobel Prize (1973, together with K. Lorenz and... ... encyclopedic Dictionary
- (1782 1982). Frisch is best known for his studies of communication in worker bees. He isolated the visual, olfactory and gustatory signals associated with communication and proved that bees use... ... to determine the direction of flight. Psychological Encyclopedia
- (18861982), German physiologist, ethologist. He studied the sense organs of fish and insects and the instinctive behavior of animals. Deciphered the mechanism of information transmission by bees (“dancing bees”). Nobel Prize (1973; together with K. Lorenz and... ... Big Encyclopedic Dictionary
FRISCH Karl von- (Frisch) Karl von (18861982), German. physiologist, ethologist. He studied the sense organs of fish and insects and the instinctive behavior of animals. Deciphered the mechanism of information transmission by bees (bee dancing). Nob. etc. (1973; jointly with K. Lorenz and N.... ... Biographical Dictionary
Carl Ritter von Frisch Karl Ritter von Frisch Date of birth: November 20, 1886 Place of birth ... Wikipedia
Karl Ritter von Frisch Karl Ritter von Frisch Date of birth: November 20, 1886 Place of birth ... Wikipedia
Karl von Frisch (11/20/1886 - 06/12/1982) - Austrian ethologist who received Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine, along with Nicolaas Tinbergen and Konrad Lorenz.
Frisch studied zoology with Richard von Hertwig, he specialized in the senses of bees, determined the mechanisms of their communication and showed their sensitivity to ultraviolet and polarized light. The focus of his research was the study of sensory perception honey bee, he was one of the first to explain the meaning of the waggle dance. This theory was met with skepticism at the time and disputed by other scientists. Only recently has it been conclusively proven that Karl Frisch's version was correct.
In 1973, Karl Frisch received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his achievements in the field of comparative behavioral psychology and his pioneering work in the field of communication between insects.
Books (1)
From the life of bees
Over the course of his long life - 96 years - the Austrian biologist Karl Frisch understood a lot about the life of bees and translated the bee language into human language, for which he eventually became a Nobel Prize laureate.
One of his discoveries remains sensational to this day. He wondered: how do bees transmit information? And he answered it brilliantly. Not far from the hive, somewhere in the bushes, he placed a saucer with honey and saw a picture that amazed him: a marked bee, having taken the prey, went to the hive and there performed a rapid circular dance on the honeycomb.
After which her friends rushed to the place where the marked bee had just delivered honey.
When Frisch published his findings, no one believed him. And then he did this: one of his colleagues hid a saucer of honey somewhere near the hive. And Frisch, having watched the ritual dance of a bee that brought honey from a hidden container to the hive, unmistakably found both the place and the saucer with honey!
Our hero is one of the few Nobel laureates, who was neither a physicist, nor a chemist, nor a physician, nor a physiologist. But he received the prize in physiology and medicine. He is an ethologist who studied the behavior of bees. However, he still made a discovery in biochemistry, being one of the first to find a new functional class of compounds - pheromones. But that’s not exactly why he received the award. The formulation of the Nobel Committee: “for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group behavior of animals.” So, meet Karl von Frisch.
Karl von Frisch.
Born November 20, 1886 in Vienna, Austria.
Died June 12, 1982 in Munich, Germany.
Winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1973 (1/3 of the prize, jointly with Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen).
The 1973 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine is without a doubt the most unique prize in the history of this category. Even the award to surgeon Kocher, which we wrote about, is not so unique; There was also an award to Alexis Carrel for the vascular suture. But whatever one may say, the award to Karl von Frisch, Konrad Lorenz and Nikolaas Tinbergen “for discoveries related to the creation and establishment of models of individual and group behavior of animals” does not fit into any gates. Ethology? This has never happened in history. Zoology? It was also not before Lorenz with ducklings and Frisch with bees. No, of course, something comparable could have happened in the interval from 1915 to 1938, when Sigmund Freud was nominated for the prize 32 times (by the way, did you know that old Freud was nominated for... a literary “Nobel” one more time - in 1936 , Romain Rolland?). But then it didn’t work out...
Failed Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine and Literature
Another important point. There are not many Nobel Prize winners who predetermined the future life of the author of the post. We have already written about Robert Woodward. But the book of our today’s hero, Karl von Frisch, “From the Life of Bees,” published in the USSR when I was only five years old, became one of the few that pushed me towards science. By the way, this 1980 edition was published during Frisch’s lifetime. And the first edition in German appeared... note, FIFTY-THREE YEARS earlier, in 1927 in Heidelberg. Truly a book of the century!
“The life of bees is like a magic well. The more you draw from it, the more abundantly it is filled,” this is from the seventh edition. But first things first.
Our hero was born in Vienna, in a scientific environment. His father, Anton von Frisch (often seen full name Anton Ritter von Frisch, but “ritter” is an analogue of the English knight, that is, “knight,” which indicates a noble title) was a urologist and professor at the University of Vienna. Anton von Frisch was considered a notable figure in science and became famous for identifying the causative agent of rhinoscleroma, a granulomatous disease of the nose, in 1882 (Fig. 1).
Figure 1. A patient with rhinoscleroma. Rhinoscleroma (scleroma) is a chronic granulomatous disease of the nasopharynx, presumably caused by the enterobacterium Klebsiella rhinoscleromatis - Frisch's bacillus, as it is also called (in honor of Anton von Frisch). The onset of the disease resembles a prolonged runny nose, then nodular infiltrates form in the mucous membrane of the nasal cavity and skin of the nose, which can ulcerate and bleed, and subsequently scar and deform the nose. The process can spread to other parts of the face and “go down” to the bronchi, and in particularly advanced cases, be complicated by sepsis. Scleroma is considered a tropical disease, but it also occurs in European countries. The mechanisms of infection are not fully understood, but it appears that inhalation of a decent amount of the pathogen is required. The basis of treatment is antibiotics (tetracyclines and fluoroquinolones).
Mom, Maria Exner (Fig. 2), was the daughter of the famous Austrian philosopher and reformer of school education of that time, Franz Serafin Exner.
Figure 2. Maria von Frisch (nee Exner, 1844–1925).
Karl's grandmother, Charlotte Duzenzi, belonged to one of the most influential families of Austria-Hungary. Maria had four brothers - and all of them also became famous people. About one of them below, but the youngest brother, Franz Serafin Exner (Fig. 3), became a famous Austrian physicist, spectroscopist and rector of the University of Vienna.
Figure 3. Franz Serafin Exner (1849–1926). Austrian physicist, since 1908 - rector of the University of Vienna. Displayed on new level Austrian physics, working on radioactivity, spectroscopy, galvanic elements, atmospheric electricity and color theory. He worked with Wilhelm Roentgen and trained many great physicists, including Nobel laureates Victor Hess and Erwin Schrödinger.
The von Frisch family had four sons (Karl is the youngest of them), and, interestingly, they all eventually became professors. Since childhood, Karl loved to tinker with all sorts of insects and blades of grass, fortunately Professor von Frisch lived outside the city, on Lake Wolfgang. They write that the future Nobel laureate was even published in various naturalist magazines.
The boy studied at the Schottengymnasium - a kind of high school at the Benedictine monastery in Vienna. Karl had a dream - to finish school and run away somewhere with a scientific expedition to explore animals and discover new species. But, of course, dad was against it. Dad wanted all the children to become medical professors, but how to become a professor on an expedition?
I had to go to medical school (in our opinion, the Faculty of Medicine) at the University of Vienna. Moreover, there were also people there - uncle Sigmund Exner (Fig. 4), brother of Karl’s mother. A famous physiologist, a student of Helmholtz, by the way, the author of one of the first manuals on microscopy.
Figure 4. Sigmund Exner (1846–1926). Austrian physiologist, known for his work on comparative physiology and the psychology of perception (its physiological foundations). Explained the principle of operation of the compound eye of insects and crustaceans.
So Karl had to start studying the distribution of pigment in visual cells - beetles, butterflies and shrimp. However, young Frisch still ran away - to the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich, where he studied ethology, the science of behavior.
After working under the famous zoologist Richard von Hertwig, he returned to the University of Vienna, where he received his Ph.D. The work that became his dissertation turned out to be very interesting.
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was believed that neither fish nor invertebrates distinguish colors. By experimenting on fish, Frisch was able to train minnows to respond differently to different colors. On this basis, Frisch had a scientific quarrel with the old and authoritative ophthalmologist Karl von Hess (1860–1923), who had a different opinion and tried to discredit Frisch’s work. However, then Frisch decided: Hess’s attacks were good, more scientists would learn about his work.
But fish are fish. As they say, it’s true that not everything is clear with them at first glance. But, being a Darwinist, Frisch understood that bees must definitely have color vision; after all, their food is in flowers. In 1912, Frisch returned to the University of Munich and began experimenting with bees.
It turned out to be quite simple to prove that bees distinguish colors: first, food was placed on a square of a certain color, and very quickly the bees sat on this square even without food, and if this square was swapped with squares of other colors...
Then came the war. Everyone had no time for bees. Frisch had poor eyesight, and therefore the front passed him by. However, medical education reminded of itself, and Frisch worked in a military hospital near Vienna until 1919. It was during this period, by the way, that he married the nurse and artist Margaret More; she later illustrated collections of his lectures. In January 1919, Frisch returned to the institute, and it was in that year that he made his main discovery, which brought him the Nobel Prize 54 years later.
He marked several worker bees with paint and studied the behavior of a bee that found food and returned to the hive.
Let's give the floor to Frisch himself: “I could hardly believe my eyes when she performed a circular dance on the honeycomb, which greatly excited the paint-marked bees next to her, who immediately flew to the feeding place... This was, I think, the most important observation in my life, at least, having the most far-reaching consequences.”
Frisch studied the dance of bees all his life. He learned that this dance is varied: if the food is close, then the dance is circular, if it is far away (further than 85 m) it is “wiggled”, in the form of a figure eight. I learned that by dancing bees indicate the angle between the location of food and the sun and that in partly cloudy conditions bees are oriented along the plane of polarization of light from the clear sky...
However, this did not stop him from making an important discovery in the chemistry of bee life. It is Frisch who has the honor of discovering bee pheromones - organic substances, the secretion of which by the glands of the queen bee regulates the behavior of worker bees and drones, and also signals danger.
It must be said that Frisch himself did not know that he was studying pheromones: he called the chemical signaling system in bees a system of “alarm substances”. The term “pheromones” appeared only in 1959 and was formed by the words “ferein” - transport (the same “pher” in the word “Lucifer” - carrier of light) - and “hormone”.
Quite a lot of bee pheromones are now known: the main ones are trans-9-keto-2-decinoic acid, which sterilizes worker bees, and trans-9-hydroxy-2-decinoic acid, which regulates swarming. Not to mention the hundreds of pheromones of other animals that became known in the last third of the 20th century - and Frisch learned of their existence decades earlier.
Frisch has lived enough long life- in order to live to see his Nobel Prize. True, he himself was no longer present at the ceremony. He was 87 years old, and Frisch's son, Otto, accepted the award.
Professor Berg Kronholm, from the Karolinska Medical-Surgical Institute, who represented the nominees, said: “The behavior of animals has fascinated man since time immemorial - this is evidenced by the abundance of animals in myths, fairy tales and fables. However, for too long man has tried to understand it on the basis of his own ideas, on the basis of his own way of thinking, feeling and acting. A description along these lines may be quite poetic, but it in no way expands our knowledge of animals.”
Karl von Frisch with his charges.
I would also like to finish my story about the great Frisch with a quote from... the preface. To the first edition of his book “From the Life of Bees”. It seems to me that these words should be in the memory of every researcher: “If a natural scientist uses too strong a magnifying glass when examining simple things, it may happen that optical instruments he will not see nature itself. Something similar happened about twenty years ago with one respectable scientist, when, while studying in the laboratory the ability of animals to perceive colors, he came to a firm and seemingly well-founded conviction that bees do not distinguish colors. This gave me the idea to take a closer look at their lives. After all, anyone who has had to natural conditions observe the biological relationship between bees and flowers with their magnificently colored corollas, one will think that it is more likely for a scientist to make a mistake in his conclusions than for nature to make such an incongruity.”.
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In physiology and medicine 1973.
Born on November 20, 1886 in Vienna, in the family of University of Vienna professor Anton Ritter von Frisch. After graduating from high school, he entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Vienna. After the first session, he transferred to the Faculty of Philosophy, and then studied zoology in Munich and Vienna. In 1910 he graduated from the institute and immediately went to work as an assistant to Richard Hertwig at the Zoological Institute at the University of Munich. In Hertwig's laboratory, he studied color changes in certain fish when exposed to light.
At that time, it was believed that fish lacked color vision. Von Frisch conducted a series of experiments, as a result of which he was able to “teach” minnows (freshwater fish from the carp family) to respond to various colors. The result obtained by von Frisch completely refuted the generally accepted theory, and it is not surprising that a discussion broke out, arousing great interest in the scientific world.
After this, he began a series of experiments with bees: it was assumed that insects also do not have the ability to distinguish colors. Von Frisch did not agree with this, believing that diversity in flower color arose precisely to attract pollinating insects.
In the process of research, he managed to “teach” bees to sit on a square of a certain color in search of food, and the insects sat on the square even when there was no food or the position of the square relative to squares of a different color was changed.
His work was interrupted by the First World War. For five years, until 1919, he worked in a military hospital near Vienna. After the end of the war, he returned to the Zoological Institute at the University of Munich as an adjunct professor. Two years later, in 1921, he moved to the same position at the University of Rostock, and two years later, in 1923, he became a professor at the University of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland). All these years he continued experiments with bees. He managed to prove that bees distinguish odors: from several boxes, they unerringly chose the one that emanated a floral aroma. As soon as the sugar syrup that produced this aroma ran out, the bees began to ignore the box.
The scientist set out to find out how scout bees report food they have found. To do this, he marked several worker bees with paint and tracked the behavior of a bee that found food in a saucer and returned to the hive. He watched in amazement as the bee performed a circular dance on the honeycomb, which excited all the other worker bees in the hive at that moment, and they immediately flew in the direction of the saucer with sugar syrup. Apparently, this “dance” contained a certain signal. For several years, von Frisch tried to decipher the meaning of the bees' dance.
While working, he realized how clearly the bee’s dance is organized. So, for example, if a food source was nearby, the bee would perform a “circle dance” (as it did in laboratory conditions). If the distance to the food source was large, then the dance changed; instead of circles, the scout bee described figure eights. He also managed to establish a correspondence between the angle of inclination of the bee during the dance to the vertical axis of the honeycomb and the angle formed by the food source relative to the sun. Another discovery: bees can find food even in cloudy days, since they have the ability to orient themselves relative to the plane of polarization of light.
Thus, he was able to prove that animals have a special “language” of communication to convey information that is vital for the existence of a given species.
After working for two years at the University of Breslau, von Frisch returned to the Zoological Institute of the University of Munich as successor to his teacher Richard Hertwig. Thanks to a subsidy from the Rockefeller Foundation, he was able to build a new laboratory building. During World War II, the building of the Zoological Institute was almost completely destroyed. To continue his research, von Frisch went to Graz in 1946, but in 1950 he returned to Munich to rebuild his institute and until 1958 he was the director of the institute. After resigning, he continued to engage in scientific work.
In 1973, Karl von Frisch (together with Konrad Lorenz and Nicholas Tinbergen) received the Nabel Prize "for his discoveries related to the creation and establishment of individual and group patterns of behavior."
Other awards include: the Magellan Prize (American Philosophical Society, (1956), the Kalinga Prize (UNESCO, 1959), the Eugeno Bolzan Prize (1963).
Member of the Munich Academy of Sciences, Vienna Academy of Sciences, Göttingen Academy of Sciences, Uppsala Academy of Sciences, Stockholm Academy of Sciences, foreign member of the Royal Society of London.
Essays: The Dancing Bees: An Account of the Life and Senses of the Honeybee New York: Harcourt, Brace (1955); Bees: Their Vision, Chemical Senses and Language Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press" (1972).
Irina Shanina
So, today is Saturday, May 27, 2017, and we traditionally offer you answers to the quiz in the “Question and Answer” format. We encounter questions ranging from the simplest to the most complex. The quiz is very interesting and quite popular, we are simply helping you test your knowledge and make sure that you have chosen the correct answer out of the four proposed. And we have another question in the quiz - For what discovery did the Austrian scientist Karl von Frisch receive the Nobel Prize in 1973?
- A. element technetium
- B. infrared rays
- C. cure for leprosy
- D. bee tongue
The correct answer is D - THE LANGUAGE OF BEES
Twerking is the closest approximation of human dances to real bee dances. Bees dance to indicate to other bees in the hive the direction in which they should fly for food, such as nectar. They move their abdomen (the back of their body) to indicate the distance to fly. The Austrian ethologist, Nobel Prize winner in physiology and medicine, Karl von Frisch, deciphered the language of bees, and we now know how it works.
To study the dancing of bees, the following experiment was carried out. Not far from the bee hive there were two reservoirs with a sweet liquid. Bees that found the first reservoir were marked with one color, and bees that found the second reservoir were marked with a different color. Returning to the hive, the bees began to dance a dance similar to twerking. The orientation of the dance depended on the direction to the source of sweets: the angle by which the dance of a bee of one color had to be shifted so that it coincided with the dance of a bee of a different color coincided exactly with the angle between the first source of sweetness, the hive and the second source of sweetness.
