Ludwig von Bertalanffy belongs to the record of biology as one of those whose work outlasted the questions that prompted it.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy was born at Atzgersdorf in 1901. His recorded nationality is Austria. He was educated at University of Innsbruck and University of Vienna.
Around the turn of the twentieth century the sciences fractured into specialisms and simultaneously became national assets, funded and directed on a scale no earlier generation had seen.
He held appointments at University of Alberta, University of Ottawa and University of Vienna, where the work centred on biology, ecology and medicine.
His principal work is general system theory. Biology had to earn its laws, because living things rarely behave identically twice.
Working from Austria shaped what was possible. Access to instruments, collections, journals and colleagues has always been geographic, and the history of science is partly a history of that inequality.
Read now, the significance is less in any single result than in the fact that the results held. Biology is cumulative, and a contribution counts if the next generation could stand on it.
His recorded remarks are gathered further down this page.
Ludwig von Bertalanffy died in 1972 at the age of 71. The work outlived the debates that surrounded it, which is the only durable form of scientific success.
Achievements
- Notable work: general system theory
- Held posts at University of Alberta, University of Ottawa and University of Vienna
- Educated at University of Innsbruck and University of Vienna
- Fields of research: biology, ecology, medicine and psychology
