Jerry Hirsch

He was born on September 20, 1922, in Manhattan, New York City.[3]

Hirsch began his interest in behavior genetics in the 1950s, as a student at the University of California, Berkeley, where he studied under Edward C. Tolman and Robert Tryon.[5] From 1956 to 1960, he was an assistant professor at Columbia University, where he worked alongside Theodosius Dobzhansky.[3] He later conducted multiple influential studies on the genetic origins of behaviors in Drosophila melanogaster, Dobzhansky's favorite species.[5][6] He subsequently continued this research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,[4] where he became an associate professor of psychology and zoology in 1960. He became a full professor of psychology there in 1963, of zoology in 1966, and of ecology, ethology, and evolution in 1976.[7] On March 30, 1970, he hosted the founding meeting of the Behavior Genetics Association at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.[8] He was the editor-in-chief of Animal Behaviour from 1968 to 1972[3] and of the Journal of Comparative Psychology from 1983 to 1988.[9] He retired from the University of Illinois in 1993, and remained an active emeritus professor there until 2004.[7]

He died on May 3, 2008, at his home in Urbana, Illinois.[3]