Bert Hölldobler
Foundation Professor of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Exploring The Superorganism
November 5, 2008
Audio Podcast and Written Transcript Available
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Bert Hölldobler
Foundation Professor of Life Sciences, Arizona State University
Bert Hölldobler was born in the Bavarian village Erling-Andechs (Germany). He received his academic education at the universities of Wuerzburg and Frankfurt, where, in 1971, he became Professor of Zoology. He is currently Foundation Professor of Life Sciences at the Arizona State University and a member of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity, where he plays a key role in organizing the new social insect research group at the School of Life Sciences. Before joining ASU, he was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass (1973-1990), and he held the Chair of Behavioral Physiology and Sociobiology at the University of Wuerzburg, Germany (1989 – 2004). In 2002, he was appointed Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
Hölldobler is a member of several national and international Academies, among them the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina), the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the National Academy of Sciences (USA). He is the recipient of numerous prizes, among them the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Science Foundation, one of the highest science prizes in Europe, the Alfried Krupp Science Prize, the Körber Prize for European Sciences, the Karl von Frisch Prize, the Benjamin Franklin-Wilhelm v. Humboldt Prize of the German-American Academic Council. He is the recipient of the Maximilian Medal, the highest honor bestowed by the State of Bavaria, and the National Merit Medal of Germany.
In addition to an extensive list of publications in peer-reviewed professional journals, he has authored three books with coauthor and Harvard University Professor Emeritus Edward O. Wilson. The Ants received the Pulitzer Prize (1991) for non-fiction writing. The Journey to the Ants was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Prize. Their newest book, The Superorganism, will be released November 5, 2008, and examines the “beauty, elegance and strangeness of insect societies.”