Adolf Wurm

Adolf Wurm (born October 26, 1886 in Günzburg , † November 24, 1968 in Würzburg ) was a German geologist and paleontologist.

Life

Wurm was named Dr. phil. doctorate and habilitation in 1913 at the University of Heidelberg ( contributions to knowledge of the Iberian-Balearic Triassic Province ). From 1819 he worked in the Bavarian State Survey at the Bavarian Higher Mining Office and on October 1, 1929, succeeded Jakob Beckenkamp as a full professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Würzburg and director of the geological institute there. Under Wurm, Würzburg's geological research was carried far beyond Lower Franconia for the first time, and in 1936 Ferdinand Trusheim completed his habilitation in geology and paleontology.

In 1923, Wurm discovered the oldest fossils in Bavaria (and at that time the oldest in Germany) on Galgenberg near Wildenstein ( Presseck ) in the Franconian Forest , a trilobite from the Cambrian that lived around 515 million years ago. In 1912 he described the fossil Mosbach lion (Panthera leo fossilis), which was 3.6 m long and 600,000 years old, after the almost complete upper skull find (from around 1885) in the sand pit of Grafenrain near Mauer , in which also the lower jaw of Homo heidelbergensis was found in 1907. Wurm also described other finds from the Maurer Sands, such as B. a fossil rhinoceros.

Adolf Wurm became a member of the Geological Association in 1910 , the year it was founded, and in 1940 he became a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

His successor at the Würzburg Mineralogical-Geological Institute at Pleichertorstraße 34 was Georg Knetsch in 1955 .

Awards

In 1959, Wurm became an honorary member of the Geological Association for his work in the old mountains of Northern Bavaria and in the Münchberger Gneissasse . In 1950 he received the Hans Stille Medal , especially for his findings through recording work in the northern Bavarian Palaeozoic . He was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit on June 23, 1962.

Fonts

• Geological guide through the Fichtel Mountains and Franconian Forest. Borntraeger, Berlin 1925.
• with Paul Dorn : The Fichtelgebirge Algonkium and its relationship to the Algonkium of Central Europe. Volume 6. Dep. Geolog. State investigation of the Bavarian Mining Authority, Munich 1932.
• Northern Bavaria, Fichtel Mountains and Franconian Forest. In: Erich Krenkel (Hrsg.): Handbook of geology and mineral treasures of Germany. Dept. 2, Volume 2 (Geology of Bavaria), Part 1.
• The Cordillera in South America. Geological Character Pictures Booklet 42.Bornraeger, Berlin-Zehlendorf 1942.
• Geology of Bavaria. 2nd Edition. Borntraeger, Berlin-Nikolassee 1961.
• Franconian Forest, Fichtel Mountains and Northern Upper Palatinate Forest. Collection of geological guides, 2nd edition. Borntraeger, Berlin-Nikolassee 1962.
• various pages of the geological map of Bavaria, including Presseck and Wunsiedel .

literature

• Gerhard von Horstig: Obituary for Adolf Wurm, 1886–1968. In: Geologica Bavarica. Volume 63, 1970, pp. 30-38.
• On the geology of the Franconian Forest - Dedicated to Adolf Wurm on his 70th birthday in Geologica Bavarica. No. 27. 1956.
• Walter A. Schnitzer , Herbert Vossmerbäumer : On the history of geology-paleontology. In: Peter Baumgart (Ed.): Four hundred years of the University of Würzburg. A commemorative publication. Degener & Co. (Gerhard Gessner), Neustadt an der Aisch 1982 (= sources and contributions to the history of the University of Würzburg. Volume 6), ISBN 3-7686-9062-8 , pp. 665–682; here: pp. 672 f., 678, 680 and 690–692.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Life data according to the yearbook of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences 1969
2. ↑ Manfred Biedefeld: A treasure trove of geological rarities. Frankenpost.de, accessed on October 8, 2011.
3. ↑ Ernst Probst: The Mosbacher lion. The huge big cat from Wiesbaden. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-640-62372-3 .
4. ↑ Geologische Rundschau, 1, Engelmann, Leipzig 1910
5. ↑ Adolf Wurm's membership entry at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on February 6, 2016.
6. ↑ Julius Maximilians University of Würzburg: Lecture directory for the summer semester of 1948. University printing house H. Stürtz, Würzburg 1948, p. 18.
7. ↑ Laudation at the Geological Association ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.