Foreign thinker
Frans de Waal
Frans de WaalPrimatology and evolutionary ethicsDutch1948–2024
Life and Thought
Frans de Waal was a Dutch-American primatologist and behavioural biologist, renowned for his studies of the social behaviour of chimpanzees, bonobos and other primates. By arguing for the evolutionary roots of empathy and morality, he became a leading figure in research on the natural origins of moral behaviour.
Frans de Waal was born in 1948 in 's-Hertogenbosch, the Netherlands. He studied biology and zoology at the universities of Nijmegen, Groningen and Utrecht, and took his doctorate at Utrecht. His early research concerned the behaviour of the captive chimpanzees at Burgers' Zoo in Arnhem. He then moved to the United States and worked at the Wisconsin National Primate Research Center and later at Emory University in Atlanta, where he was C. H. Candler Professor of Primate Behavior and director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.
His first well-known book, "Chimpanzee Politics" (1982), describes coalition-building, reconciliation and the struggle for power in chimpanzee society. In "Peacemaking Among Primates" and other works he studied reconciliation and conflict resolution in primates. In "Good Natured" (1996), "Primates and Philosophers" (2006) and "The Age of Empathy" (2009), he argued that empathy, cooperation and fairness have evolutionary roots and that human morality cannot be seen as a thin layer of culture over a selfish nature; he set this view against what he called "veneer theory". In "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" (2016) he pursued his critique of anthropocentric prejudice about animal cognition, and in "Different" (2022) he turned to the question of gender in primates.
De Waal was a member of the US National Academy of Sciences and of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Time magazine included him in its list of the world's 100 most influential people in 2007. He died in Atlanta on 14 March 2024.