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June 25: Bug Man
Entomologist Thomas Eisner, considered to be the “father of chemical ecology” for his groundbreaking examinations of the chemical signalling of bugs, was born in Berlin on this date in 1929. Dr. Eisner’s eureka moment came when he was studying orb-weaving spiders and observed a spider freeing a bella moth from its web rather than eating it. Eisner and his longtime collaborator, Dr. Jerrold Meinwald, began to study the moth species and found that the males absorbed alkaloids from the plants they ate when they were larvae, which were distasteful to the spiders and attractive to female moths. Eisner and Meinwald were soon scientifically immersed in the complex, amazing use of chemical interaction among insects and plants. Eisner’s family fled from Germany to Barcelona when the Nazis came to power in Berlin in 1933. After he had spent much of his childhood in Uruguay (where he recalled encountering an astounding myriad of insects), they came to the U.S. in 1947. He spent half a century at Cornell University and received a National Medal of Science in 1994. Eisner was a board member of the National Audubon Society and the Union of Concerned Scientists, and an admired nature photography, science writer, and documentary filmmaker. He died in 2011 at age 81.
“The natural treasury of chemicals are disappearing faster than we can keep track, before we’ve even assessed the resources.” —Thomas Eisner
