August Rothpletz

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Friedrich August Rothpletz (born April 28, 1853 in Neustadt an der Haardt , † January 27, 1918 in Oberstdorf ) was a German geologist and paleontologist .

Life

On his father's side, Rothpletz came from a German-Swiss family (his mother was from the Palatinate) and attended high school in Zurich . From 1871 he studied natural sciences and especially geology, first in Heidelberg, then in Zurich and Leipzig. From 1875 he was a member of the Saxon Geological State Institute and until 1880 mapped among other things in the Ore Mountains . During this time he also went on study trips to England, Scotland and the Alps and from 1880 to the Paris Basin and northern France and in 1881 to Switzerland. In 1882 he received his doctorate. He then moved to Munich and completed his habilitation there in 1884 at the university. He taught at the university mainly on the geology and tectonics of the Alps and palaeobotany. In 1894 he became associate professor and in 1904, as successor to Karl von Zittel, full professor of geology and paleontology at the University of Munich and director of the Bavarian state geological-paleontological collection . He died in a sanatorium where he was staying because of a heart condition.

As the successor of Zittel, he also taught paleontology, but was primarily a tectonist who founded a school of Alpine geologists in Munich. He and his students mapped the Bavarian Alps (on a scale of 1: 25,000 or 1: 50,000).

As a proponent of the ceiling theory , which he applied not only in the Alps but as one of the first worldwide, he was involved in heated controversies with Albert Heim in the 1890s , who interpreted thrusts as a folding phenomenon. However, the thrust theory prevailed from around 1902/03. Since he often wrongly used thrusts as an explanation, he was exposed to criticism.

He also wrote essays on the geology of Tenerife and Gran Canaria, where he was in 1886 and 1889.

In 1898 he became a member of the Leopoldina and in 1904 of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences . In 1910 he was elected deputy chairman of the newly founded Geological Association . In 1912 he became a member of the Paleontological Society .

Together with Richard von Hertwig , Siegmund Günther , Karl Ritter von Goebel and Lucian Scherman, he belonged to the circle of Therese von Bayern interested in natural science , who met regularly in her salon.

The church historian Franz Overbeck was his brother-in-law (husband of his sister Ida).

Fonts

  • The Karwendel Mountains , Munich 1888 Archives
  • Geotectonic Problems , 1894
  • The Diluvium of Paris and its position in the Pleistocene , Geneva 1881, Zurich 1883
  • Geological cross-section through the Eastern Alps , 1894
  • The geotectonic problem of the Glarus Alps , Jena: Fischer 1898
  • Geological Alpine Research , 3 volumes, Munich: J. Lindauer 1900, 1905, 1908
    • Volume 1: The border area between the East and West Alps and the rhaetian shift archive
    • Volume 2: Extent and origin of the rhaetian thrust mass archive
    • Volume 3: The north and south shifts in the Freiburg Alps Archives
  • About the creation of the Rhine valley above Lake Constance , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 29th year 1900, pp. 31–46 ( digital copy )
  • Alpine majesties and their entourage. The mountain world of the earth in pictures , 4 volumes, Munich 1901 to 1904
  • Geological guide through the Alps , Borntraeger, Berlin 1902 Archives
  • The history of the Lake Constance region before the Ice Age , in: Writings of the Association for the History of Lake Constance and its Surroundings , 37th year 1908, pp. 7–22 ( digitized version )
  • On the systematic interpretation and the stratigraphic significance of the oldest fossils in Europe and North America with special consideration of the cryptozoa and oolites , 3 parts, Munich 1915 to 1922
  • The Osterseen and the Isar foreland glacier , Munich 1917

literature

  • Josef Felix Pompeckj , obituary in: Journal of the German Geological Society 70, 1918, pp. 15–34
  • Entry in Hans-Michael Körner (Ed.): Large Bavarian Biographical Encyclopedia . KG Saur, Munich 2005
  • Biography in Günter Voss: The Canary Primer. From German writings 1777-1965 . epubli, Berlin 2012

Web links

Wikisource: August Rothpletz  - Sources and full texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Member entry by August Rothpletz at the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina , accessed on March 14, 2016.
  2. ↑ Member entry by August Rothpletz (with picture) at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences , accessed on March 14, 2016.
  3. ^ Palaeontological Journal 1, Issue 1, March 1914
  4. ↑ Dietmar Willomeit (editor) thinker, researcher and discoverer. A history of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in historical portraits , CH Beck 2009
personal data
SURNAME Rothpletz, August
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Rothpletz, Friedrich August (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist and paleontologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 28, 1853
PLACE OF BIRTH Neustadt an der Haardt
DATE OF DEATH January 27, 1918
Place of death Oberstdorf