Some Biogeographers, Evolutionists and Ecologists:
Chrono-Biographical Sketches

Fraenkel, Gottfried Samuel (Germany-United States 1901-1984)
entomology, physiology

Fraenkel's life was split fairly evenly between the Old World and the United States, where he worked for many years in the Department of Entomology at the University of Illinois. His best known monographic publication was later translated into English in 1940 as The Orientation of Animals; it featured conclusions based on his early studies on insect physiology. But Fraenkel's research embraced a variety of subjects (e.g., the vitamin carnitine, the insect hormones ecdysone and bursicon, human nutrition, plant host selection, insect pests) and organisms (e.g., flies, fleas, snails, silkworms, marine invertebrates), and in several of these studies he made important discoveries whose full implications were only understood many years later.

--born in Munich, Germany, on 23 April 1901.
--1925: Ph.D. in zoology, University of Munich
--1928-1930: zoological assistant, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
--1932: publishes "Die Wanderungen der Insekten" in the Ergebnisse der Biologie
--1932-1933: privatdozent, University of Frankfurt, Germany
--1933-1948: associated as researcher and lecturer with the University of London
--1940: publishes his The Orientation of Animals
--1947: makes first visit to the United States
--1948-1972: professor of entomology, University of Illinois
--1953: becomes a naturalized American citizen
--1959: publishes "The Raison d'Être of Secondary Plant Substances" in Science
--1961: receives a Research Career Award from the U. S. Public Health Service
--1965: publishes "Bursicon, a Hormone which Mediates Tanning of the Cuticle in the Adult Fly and Other Insects" in the Journal of Insect Physiology, with C. Hsaio
--1968: elected to National Academy of Sciences
--1972: retires from teaching
--dies on 26 October 1984.

--Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences (U.S.A.), Vol. 59 (1990): 169-195.