(Zacharias) (1903-1989) Austrian ethologist who studied the relationship between instinct and behavior, particularly in birds, and described the phenomenon of imprinting 1935. His books include King Solomon’s Ring 1952 (on animal behavior) and On Aggression 1966 (on human behavior). In 1973 he shared the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine with Nikolaas Tinbergen and Karl von Frisch.
Lorenz was born in Vienna and studied medicine there and in the US at Columbia University. In 1940 he was appointed professor of general psychology at the Albertus University in Königsberg, Germany. Lorenz sympathized with Nazi views on eugenics, and in 1938 applied to join the Nazi party. From 1942 to 1944 he was a physician in the German army, and then spent four years in the USSR as a prisoner of war. Returning to Austria, he successively headed various research institutes.
Together, Lorenz and Tinbergen discovered how birds of prey are recognized by other birds. All birds of prey have short necks, and the sight of any bird—or even a dummy bird—with a short neck causes other birds to fly away.

(1829-1891) Danish mathematician and physicist. He developed mathematical formulae to describe phenomena such as the relation between the refraction of light and the density of a pure transparent substance, and the relation between a metal's electrical and thermal conductivity and temperature.
Lorenz was born in Elsinore and studied at the Technical University in Copenhagen. He became professor at the Military Academy in Copenhagen 1876. From 1887, his research was funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.
He investigated the mathematical description for light propagation through a single homogeneous medium and described the passage of light between different media. The formula for the mathematical relationship between the refractive index and the density of a medium was published by Lorenz in 1869 and by Hendrick Lorentz (who discovered it independently) in 1870 and is therefore called the Lorentz–Lorenz formula. Using his electromagnetic theory of light, Lorenz was able to derive a correct value for the velocity of light.