"Father of Chemical Ecology" Thomas Eisner Signed Newspaper Photo Todd Mueller C

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"Father of Chemical Ecology." Thomas Eisner Hand Signed Newspaper Photo.
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ES-7865E
Thomas Eisner
(June 25, 1929 – March 25, 2011) was a German-American
entomologist
and ecologist, known as the "father of chemical ecology." He was a Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Chemical Ecology at
Cornell University
, and Director of the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology (CIRCE). He was a world authority on
animal behavior
, ecology, and
evolution
, and, together with his Cornell colleague
Jerrold Meinwald
, was one of the pioneers of
chemical ecology
, the discipline dealing with the chemical interactions of organisms. He was author or co-author of some 400 scientific articles and seven books. Thomas Eisner was born on June 25, 1929, in Berlin, Germany. His father, Hans Eisner, was a chemist of Jewish origin, and a coworker of
Fritz Haber
at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Electrochemistry in Berlin; he later held a chair for chemistry at Cornell. His mother, Margarete Heil-Eisner, was an artist. Escaping the
Nazi
regime, the family moved to
Barcelona
and, following the
Spanish Civil War
, to
Uruguay
. The Eisners came to the U.S. in 1947.
Thomas Eisner became a naturalized American citizen, and applied to
Cornell University
as an undergraduate, but was rejected. He received his B.S. and PhD degrees from
Harvard University
, and joined Cornell's
entomology
faculty in 1957. He married Maria Eisner, who was a member of his lab. In 1964, he helped found the Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, where he worked until his death. In addition to his academic work, he was a passionate nature photographer and
videographer
. His film
Secret Weapons
won the Grand Award at the
New York Film Festival
and was named Best Science Film by the
British Association for the Advancement of Science
. He was also an avid pianist and occasional conductor. Eisner died on March 25, 2011, of
Parkinson's disease
.
He was an atheist.
Eisner's main body of work was in
chemical ecology
, primarily studying the
chemical defenses
of insects against
predation
. Some of his most famous work was conducted on the
bombardier beetle
, which he discovered creates a chemical reaction within its body to shoot a boiling noxious liquid from a nozzle in its abdomen.
A field biologist with working experience on four continents, he was also an active conservationist. He served on the Board of Directors of the
National Audubon Society
, the National Scientific Council of the Nature Conservancy, and the World Resources Institute Council. He was a past president of the
American Society of Naturalists
, and chairman of the Biology Section of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science
. He played a key role in initiating the Congressional Fellow Program in Washington DC, and in efforts to preserve wilderness areas in Florida and Texas. Eisner was furthermore a member of the
National Academy of Sciences
, the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
, and the
American Philosophical Society
. He received numerous honors, including the
Tyler Prize for Environmental Achievement
, the
Harvard Centennial Medal
, the 1994
National Medal of Science
[6]
and the
Lewis Thomas Prize
for Writing about Science. He also held honorary degrees from universities in
Sweden
, Germany,
Switzerland
and the United States, and was a foreign fellow of the
Royal Society
. Eisner was additionally a member of the
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina
and
Academia Europaea
. In 2008, Eisner was awarded the
John J. Carty Award
by the
National Academy of Sciences
.