Thomas Eisner

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.

Personal life

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.