Griffin, Donald Redfield (1915–2003)

US zoologist who discovered that bats use echolocation to navigate and orientate themselves in space, that is they emit ultrasonic sounds that rebound off objects that they are then able to avoid. His later research was mainly in the areas of animal navigation, acoustic orientation and sensory biophysics, and animal consciousness.

Griffin was born in Southampton, New York and studied at Harvard University, where as an undergraduate he discovered that bats use echolocation in order to orientate themselves. He obtained a PhD from Harvard 1942, and then worked as a research assistant in the psycho-acoustic laboratory and fatigue laboratory at Harvard until 1945. In 1946 he went to Cornell University where he lectured in zoology until 1953 when he returned to Harvard. He was appointed professor at the Rockefeller University in New York 1965, also becoming a research zoologist for the New York Zoological Society in the same year.

His writing includes Listening in the Dark 1958, Echoes of Bats and Men 1959, Animal Structure and Function 1962, Bird Migration 1964, and The Question of Animal Awareness 1976.