Curt Richter

Curt Paul Richter (1894 to 1988) was an American biologist, psychobiologist and geneticist whose animal experiments shaped the study of biological rhythms and innate behaviour. Born in Denver, Colorado, to German immigrant parents, he left engineering studies in Germany when the First World War broke out, moved to Harvard University, where he studied psychology under E. B. Holt and Robert Yerkes, and later studied under John Watson at Johns Hopkins University. He showed that animals deprived of a substance they need, or whose hormone levels are altered, develop appetites and behaviours that fit the need even without earlier experience, which he took as evidence of genetically programmed behaviour, and he identified the hypothalamus as a biological pacemaker involved in sleep and wakefulness. His drowning rat experiments are widely quoted as an argument for the importance of hope. He was elected to the United States National Academy of Sciences in 1948.