1. Donald Redfield Griffin was an American professor of zoology at various universities who conducted seminal research in animal behavior, animal navigation, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics.
11 Facts About Donald Griffin
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Donald Griffin was born on August 3,1915, in Southampton, New York, and attended Harvard University, where he was awarded bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees.
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Donald Griffin conducted preliminary tests during the summer of 1939 when he was a research fellow at the Edmund Niles Huyck Preserve and Biological Research Station in Rensselaerville, New York.
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Donald Griffin set up a minimal bat flight facility in a room measuring 9 by 7 feet in a barn and then measured the ability of bats to avoid obstacles by having them fly through a barrier of metal wires suspended from a ceiling.
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Donald Griffin coined the term "echolocation" in 1944 to describe the phenomenon, which many physiologists of the day could not believe was possible.
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At a time when animal thinking was a topic deemed unfit for serious research, Donald Griffin became a pioneer in the field of cognitive ethology, starting research in 1978 that studied how animals think.
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Donald Griffin was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1952.
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Donald Griffin was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1971.
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Donald Griffin was a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Donald Griffin was the Director of the Institute for Research in Animal Behavior, in the 1960s, which was formed as a collaboration between Rockefeller University and the New York Zoological Society.
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Donald Griffin was survived by two daughters and a son from his first marriage.