Bert Hölldobler

Hölldobler's 2007 interview on the Ask A Biologist podcast program details his early life growing up in Germany as well as his interest in ants and writing.

In addition to his published scientific papers and books, Hölldobler's work was the subject of the documentary film Ants - Nature's Secret Power the winner of the 2005 Jackson Hole Wildlife Film Festivals Special Jury Prize.

Berthold Karl Hölldobler (born 25 June 1936) is a German sociobiologist and evolutionary biologist who studies evolution and social organization in ants. He is the author of several books, including The Ants, for which he and his co-author, E. O. Wilson received the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction writing in 1991.

Hölldobler was born June 25, 1936, in Erling-Andechs, Bavaria, Germany, the son of Karl and Maria Hölldobler. He studied biology and chemistry at the University of Würzburg. His doctoral thesis was on the social behavior of the male carpenter ant and their role in the organization of carpenter ant societies. He was named professor of zoology at the University of Frankfurt in 1971. From 1973 to 1990 he was professor of biology and Alexander Agassiz professor of zoology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1989 he returned to Germany to accept the chair of behavioral physiology and sociobiology at the Theodor-Boveri-Institute of the University of Würzburg. From 2002 to 2008 Hölldobler was an Andrew D. White Professor at Large at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. Since his retirement in 2004 Hölldobler has worked as a research professor in the School of Life Sciences at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona. There he is one of the founders of the Social Insect Research Group (SIRG) and of the Center for Social Dynamics and Complexity.