Frans de Waal (75) dies after battling stomach cancer
World-famous Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal (75) has died, announced Emory University in Atlanta on the weekend.
Famed Dutch primatologist Frans de Waal died on Thursday (14 March) from stomach cancer, Emory University in Atlanta (United States), where he taught, announced on Saturday.
He was 75.
De Waal became world-famous for work demonstrating that non-human primates are endowed with emotions and inner lives like humans.
Born in 1948 in Hertogenbosch in the Netherlands, he studied zoology and ethology before obtaining a doctorate in biology. De Waal's thesis saw him working with chimpanzees from Arnhem Zoo where he made his first “major discovery”: chimpanzees reconcile after an argument.
In 2007, Time magazine named De Waal “one of the 100 most influential people in the world".
“From his seminal book in 1982, Chimpanzee Politicsto, that of 2019, The Last Embrace, De Waal shattered long-held preconceptions about what it meant to be an animal and a human.”
- Emory University
Read the full statement here.
Watch De Waal explain some of his work below: