Eisner, Thomas (1929- )

German-born US entomologist and conservation activist. He is an authority on the role of chemicals in insect behaviour. A campaigner for the preservation of biodiversity, in order to prevent the extinction of species and the loss of potentially useful chemicals, he advocates ‘chemical prospecting’, whereby drug companies buy the rights to extract chemically rich organic matter from forests, leaving the forests themselves intact.

Thomas was born in Berlin but moved to New York with his family in 1947. His early entomological work concentrated on the bombardier beetle. He became professor of biology at Cornell University, New York, 1976, and director of the Cornell Institute for Research in Chemical Ecology. Concerned at the environmental implications of the population explosion, he became a member of Zero Population Growth.