Hall of Fame

Günter Tembrock

Voice and Speech Science

Famous for pioneering bioacoustics and building one of the world’s largest archives of animal vocalizations.

Günter Tembrock (June 7, 1918 – January 26, 2011) was a distinguished zoologist renowned for his pioneering work in comparative behavioral biology at Humboldt University of Berlin, Germany, following World War II. He studied anthropology, paleontology, and zoology, earning his degree in 1941 from Berlin University. In 1948, he established the ethological research institute at the Zoological Institute of Humboldt University of Berlin — the first such institute in Germany.

His research in behavioral biology integrated and synthesized the study of function, evolution, mechanism, and individual development of behavior, with conclusions grounded in physiology. In 1951, he began collecting and analyzing animal vocalizations and became a leading expert on mammal vocalizations. Tembrock published numerous articles and books on the subject. In 1959, he helped coin the term “bioacoustics” with his book Tierstimmen: eine Einführung in die Bioakustik (Animal Voices: An Introduction to Bioacoustics). Bioacoustics was then defined as the study of sound production, transmission, and reception in animals. Professor Tembrock’s research focused on how animals use sounds in their interactions with one another and their environment, and he explored the factors associated with — or causing — differences in vocal signals. Today, his Tierstimmenarchiv (“Animal Sound Archive”), housed at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, remains one of the largest animal sound archives in the world.

Tembrock had a profound influence on many people. He possessed an extensive and detailed knowledge of his field, which he expected his students to emulate in their research on various animal species. As a lecturer, he was widely admired. He had a strong and captivating voice, having originally trained as a singer with a baritone, and he continued to sing well into old age. Tembrock was dedicated to making his knowledge accessible to a broader audience, creating a television series for East German TV on animal behavior in the 1980s and producing vinyl records featuring bird vocalizations. He taught at Humboldt University of Berlin until 2010, at the age of 91.

Bio by Tobias Riede

Figures and Media

Cover of Tierstimmenforschung (3rd ed.) — hand drawing by Tembrock depicting the production, transmission, and reception of animal sound, with a vocalizing chimpanzee, microphone, spectrogram, and laryngeal anatomy.

SELECTED ARTICLES

Tembrock, G. (1957). Zur Ethologie des Rotfuchses (Vulpes vulpes L.) unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Fortpflanzung [Ethology of the Red Fox]. Zoologischer Garten N. F., 23, 289–532.

Tembrock, G. (1959). Tierstimmen: eine Einführung in die Bioakustik [Animal Voices: An Introduction to Bioacoustics]. A. Ziemsen.

Tembrock, G. (1963). Acoustic behaviour of mammals. In R. G. Busnel (Ed.), Acoustic Behaviour of Animals (pp. 751–786). Amsterdam: Elsevier.

Tembrock, G. (1968). Land mammals. In T. A. Sebeok (Ed.), Animal Communication (pp. 338–404). Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Tembrock, G. (1971). Biokommunikation: Informationsübertragung im biologischen Bereich [Biocommunication: Information Transfer in Biology]. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Tembrock, G. (1976). Canid vocalizations. Behavioural Processes, 1, 57–75.

Tembrock, G. (1978). Bioakustik, Musik und Sprache [Bioacoustics, Music and Language]. Berlin: Akademie-Verlag.

Tembrock, G. (1980). Grundriss der Verhaltenswissenschaften: Eine Einführung in die allgemeine Biologie des Verhaltens. Stuttgart: Gustav Fischer.

Tembrock, G. (1996). Akustische Kommunikation bei Säugetieren [Acoustic Communication in Mammals]. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft.

Wilden, I., Herzel, H., Peters, G., & Tembrock, G. (1998). Subharmonics, biphonation, and deterministic chaos in mammal vocalization. Bioacoustics, 9(3), 171–196.