Prestigious Professorship : American Zoologist Finds Promised Land in Vienna

American John Dittami figures that he has just become the holder of a prestigious lifetime professorship at the University of Vienna because he turned into the wrong valley while walking through Europe in 1974.

Dittami, a zoologist, startled the staid Austrian academic world Sept. 1 by being named head of the university’s new department of ethology--the study of comparative animal behavior.

At 39, he is the only American among 400 or more full professors in tradition-bound Austria’s university system.

Dittami, born and raised in Massachusetts, is a specialist in animal behavior--geese in particular--and biological clocks. Fluent in German, he sprinkles his enthusiastic fowl stories with phrases like “weirdo birds” and “really neat tricks.”

He represents a slowly growing number of North American academics who view central Europe as a “promised land” for grants as American research funding dwindles.

‘Money to Throw Around’

Dittami said many central European universities, especially in West Germany and Austria, “have money to throw around” for serious research. But he warned that the “language barrier is a big one and, unless you’re fluent, there’s not much of a realistic chance.”

Dissatisfied with teaching high school, Dittami came to Europe in 1974 with $200 to his name and a plan to walk from Linz, Austria, to Naples to take a marine biology course. He never got there.

Turning left instead of right, he came by accident to the estate of the man whose professor’s chair he has just won--Austria’s sole surviving Nobel laureate, Konrad Lorenz, 84, who shared the 1974 medicine prize with two others for pioneering the scientific study of animal behavior.

Dittami accepted Lorenz’s offer to raise his flock of Greylag geese. In the process, he met his German-born future wife, Brigitte--who was also raising geese. They talked philosophy across a pond with their respective broods in tow.

“We would get together and talk more privately after the geese had been put to bed,” Dittami said.

Modern Pied Piper

The villagers of Gruenau considered him a kind of modern Pied Piper, riding his tiny motor scooter through the streets while his geese trailed behind or soared hundreds of feet above.

“I knew the villagers were making ‘he’s crazy’ signs when I went past,” he recalled. “But I did get respect when I would yell at a couple of my geese to dive down from a kilometer up in the air.”

Dittami worked or studied at the Max Planck Institute for behavioral research in Munich, the University of Munich and did 6 more months of research on Lorenz’s farm. During two years in Kenya studying the biological clocks of tropical birds, both his two sons nearly died.

By the time he returned to Munich in 1983, Lorenz was much taken with his research. He gave his personal blessing to his one-time goose raiser--who by then had published a book called “A Goosery” on raising geese--when the University of Vienna sought an occupant for the Lorenz chair.

“Lorenz already knew my work, he adored my wife and it satisfied the ‘new trends’ people at the university,” Dittami said.

Treated Royally

He said the Austrian government has treated him royally, setting aside hundreds of thousands of dollars for research equipment and making him an Austrian citizen. Citizenship is a legal requirement for full professors, although Dittami also is allowed to keep his American passport.

Dittami said his appointment “made everyone happy, but there were still some people who shook their heads that I had jumped from an assistantship to full professor with a lifetime chair at so young an age. Not to mention that I was an American.”

However oddly it sits in Austrian academic circles, Dittami loves to spice up his stories about the reproductive habits of birds until some become unsuitable for print.

In his new job, he said, he hopes to “integrate the approach to studying animal behavior” while bringing his folksy American touch to the hard-and-fast traditions of Austrian classrooms.

Such as in his tales of his most recent subject, the brown penduline tit, a species of East European songbird, which he studies atop ladders in the marshy flats of eastern Austria. He finds their behavior like “playing Russian roulette with the lives of their young.”

After the female lays her eggs comes “a sweat-out session where each tries to dump the other one with the eggs,” he said. “It’s whoever’s faster.” Often, both parent birds fly the coop simultaneously, leaving the chicks to starve.

“They just sneak off into the night, the bums,” he said.