Alfred Jahn (geographer)
Alfred Jahn (born April 22, 1915 in Kleparów near Lemberg (Lwów or L'viv); † April 1, 1999 in Breslau , Wrocław) was a Polish geographer , geomorphologist , polar researcher and rector of the University of Wroclaw .
biography
Start of the scientific career
Alfred Jahn received his Master of Science degree from the National Ivan Franko University in Lemberg in 1937 . In the same year he took part in the first Polish expedition to West Greenland , which was organized by Aleksander Kosiba and provided enough material for his doctoral thesis “Research into the structure and temperature of the soils of West Greenland” (“Badania nad Strukturą i temperaturą gleb w Zachodniej Grenlandii ”), which he completed in 1939.
Second World War
Jahn survived the German occupation of Poland 1939-1945 by working as an employee of Prof. Dr. Rudolf Weigl worked at the Institute for Typhus and Virus Research in Lemberg and supported Weigl in its work on typhoid vaccines by “feeding” infected lice with his blood (as “lice feeder”, Polish: “Karmiciel wszy”). The work on the vaccines was classified by the German occupiers as "important to the war effort".
Research work continued after 1945
After the Second World War , he worked first at the Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin and then at the reopened University of Wroclaw with a large number of former faculty members of the National Ivan Franko University of Lviv . In the 1950s he continued his polar research and took part in expeditions to Spitzbergen and the Polish polar station on Hornsund .
In addition, he also led research in Siberia , Alaska and areas of Scandinavia , which made him one of the world's leading polar explorers. In 1962 he was appointed President or Rector of the University of Wroclaw.
Conflicts with the communist regime
In 1968 Alfred Jahn decided to stand behind the student protests against communist censorship as rector of the University of Breslau . He then lost his job. The same thing happened to him when he spoke out against the policies of the Jaruzelski government in 1982 during martial law in Poland (1981–1983) . He was then removed from the chairmanship of the Polar Research Committee of the Polish Academy of Sciences .
In 1972 he founded the "Polar Club of the Geographical Society of Poland" ("Polskie Towarzystwo Geograficzne") and was its first president until 1982.
1990s
In 1991 Jahn published his memoir: "Z Kleparowa w świat szeroki" ("From Kleparow to the big wide world"). He retired in the 1990s, but remained scientifically active until his death on April 1, 1999.
Alfred Jahn was a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences , the Norwegian Academy of Sciences and the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina (1977), as well as honorary doctorates from the University of Breslau (1985), the Maria Curie Skłodowska University in Lublin (1986) and Adam -Mickiewicz University in Poznan (1990). In 1994 he received the Albrecht Penck Medal .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Krzysztof Birkenmajer: 80th Anniversary of Professor Alfred Jahn . In: Polish Polar Research 16, 1995, p. 3 f.
- ^ Krzysztof Birkenmajer: In Memoriam. Alfred Jahn (1915-1999) . In: Polish Polar Research 20, 1999, p. 175 f.
- ↑ Alfred Jahn: Z Kleparowa w świat szeroki , Ossolineum, 1991, ISBN 83-04-03758-0
- ↑ Piotr Migon, Yoko Ota: International Association of Geomorphologists - Newsletter n ° 16 (2/1999) . In: Géomorphologie: relief, processus, environnement . 5, No. 2, 1999, pp. 187-191. ISSN 1266-5304 . Retrieved August 15, 2012.
- ↑ Michał Czajka, Marcin Kamler, Witold Sienkiewicz: Leksykon historii Polski , Wydawnictwo Wiedza Powszechna, Warszawa 1995 (accessed via WBIS online ).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jahn, Alfred |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Polish geographer, geomorphologist, polar explorer and rector |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 22, 1915 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Kleparów near Lemberg (Lwów or L'viv) |
| DATE OF DEATH | April 1, 1999 |
| Place of death | Wroclaw , Wroclaw |