| Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt | |
| Birth Date: | 15 June 1928 |
| Birth Place: | Vienna, First Austrian Republic |
| Death Place: | Starnberg, Germany |
| Nationality: | Austrian |
| Fields: | Ethology |
| Alma Mater: | Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich |
| Workplaces: | University of Vienna |
Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt (pronounced as /de/; 15 June 1928 – 2 June 2018) was an Austrian ethologist in the field of human ethology.[1] In authoring the book which bears that title, he applied ethology to humans by studying them in a perspective more common to volumes studying animal behavior.
Born in Vienna, Austria, Eibl-Eibesfeldt studied zoology at the University of Vienna from 1945 to 1949. From 1946 to 1948 he was research associate at the Biological Station Wilhelminenberg near Vienna and became a research associate of the Institute for Comparative Behavior Studies in Altenberg near Vienna with Konrad Lorenz in 1949. Between 1951 and 1969 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology (first in Westphalia, from 1957 at Seewiesen, Bavaria). In 1970 he became Professor for Zoology at the University of Munich. From 1975 he was the head of the Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Department of Human Ethology in Andechs, Germany. He was the co-founder and first president of the International Society for Human Ethology. From 1992 he was Honorary Director of the Ludwig-Boltzmann-Institute for Urban Ethology in Vienna.
In the first 20 years of his work as an animal ethologist, he investigated experimentally and descriptively the development of behavior of mammals and compared the behavior of communication of vertebrates. He was the author of many books such as and Human Ethology.
He married Eleonore Eibl-Eibesfeldt in 1950. They had two children, Bernolf and Roswitha.
Eibl-Eibesfeldt died on 2 June 2018 in Starnberg, at age 89.[2]
For many years he dived with Hans Hass on his diving boat Xarifa.[3]