Arvid Gustaf Högbom

Arvid Högbom, portrait by Carl Wilhelmson 1928

Arvid Gustaf Högbom (born January 11, 1857 in Vännäs , Västerbotten , † January 19, 1940 ) was a Swedish geologist, mineralogist and geographer. He was a professor at Uppsala University .

Högbom studied in Uppsala with the candidate exam in 1880 and the licentiate degree in 1884 and the doctorate in 1885. He was then a lecturer and from 1887 professor. From 1891 he taught at Stockholm University with a professorship from 1895. In the following year, however, he switched back to a professorship in Uppsala. In 1922 he retired.

Högbom worked as a geologist with magmatic differentiation, which he studied in the iron ore area of Gällivare in northern Sweden. His interpretation of limestone as carbonatites in the Alnö area led to heated controversy at the time. He also did important work on the tectonics of the Caledonids and on the ice edge position of the last Ice Age. Taking up a question from Svante Arrhenius , he examined the rise in temperature in the atmosphere due to the combustion of fossil fuels, but was of the opinion that a measurable warming effect from coal combustion would take thousands of years and would otherwise be assessed positively. As a geographer he dealt with Swedish place names, the formation of Ice Age valleys and changes in altitude after the Ice Age and wrote a book about his homeland, Norrland (1906).

From 1897 to 1922 he published the Bulletin of the Geological institution of Upsala . He was one of the organizers of the International Geological Congress in Stockholm in 1910.

He was an honorary member of the Geological Association and since 1922 a corresponding member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences . The Högbom Outcrops have borne his name since 1972 , rocky outcrops in the East Antarctic Coatsland.

literature

• Erik Jungner, obituary in Geologische Rundschau, 31 1940, 91–93