Nils Are Øritsland (5 August 1939 – 24 November 2006) was a Norwegian polar researcher in animal

physiology Physiology (; ) is the scientific study of functions and mechanisms in a living system. As a sub-discipline of biology, physiology focuses on how organisms, organ systems, individual organs, cells, and biomolecules carry out the chemical ...

and

ecology Ecology () is the study of the relationships between living organisms, including humans, and their physical environment. Ecology considers organisms at the individual, population, community, ecosystem, and biosphere level. Ecology overlaps wi ...

. Øritsland received his PhD in 1976 from the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

. He was director of the

Norwegian Polar Institute The Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI; no, Norsk Polarinstitutt) is Norway's central governmental institution for scientific research, mapping and environmental monitoring in the Arctic and the Antarctic. The NPI is a directorate under Norway's Min ...

from 1991 to 1993. In 1980, Øritsland conducted a controversial study into the effects of

oil spill An oil spill is the release of a liquid petroleum hydrocarbon into the environment, especially the marine ecosystem, due to human activity, and is a form of pollution. The term is usually given to marine oil spills, where oil is released into th ...

s on

polar bear The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear specie ...

s that resulted in the deaths of polar bears after they ingested

crude oil Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crude ...

.From the CBC archives: Researcher coats polar bears in oil for science
/ref>

Selected works

*Lavigne, D. M. and Øritsland, N. A. (1974) Ultraviolet photography: a new application for remote sensing of mammals, ''Can J. Zool.'' 52, 939–943 *Lavigne, D. M. and Øritsland, N. A. (1974) Black polar bears, ''Nature'' 251, 218–219 *Øritsland, N. A. and Ronald, K. (1978) Solar heating of mammals: Observations of hair transmittance, ''Int. J. Biometeor.'' 22, 197–201 *Øritsland, N. A. (1986) Svalbardreinen og dens livsgrunnlag, Universitetsforlaget, *Øritsland, N. A. (1990) Starvation survival and body composition in mammals with particular reference to ''Homo sapiens''. ''Bulletin of Mathematical Biology'' 52, 643–655

References

1939 births 2006 deaths 20th-century Norwegian scientists 21st-century Norwegian scientists {{norway-scientist-stub