Bernhard Brockamp

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Bernhard Brockamp (born October 18, 1902 in Osnabrück ; † December 20, 1968 there ) was a German geophysicist and polar researcher .

Life

Brockamp (right with pilot balloon ) on the Wegener expedition in 1931

Brockamp studied geology , physics and mathematics in Münster and Göttingen . In 1926 he became Emil Wiechert's assistant at the Geophysical Institute of the University of Göttingen . In 1930 he received his doctorate with the thesis Seismic Observations in Quarry Blasting . He then became an employee of the Askania works . As early as 1929, he had taken seismic measurements on the Pasterze glacier to determine the thickness of the ice layer. Thereupon Alfred Wegener offered him the participation in his Greenland expedition1930/31 with the task of carrying out similar investigations on the inland ice there. Brockamp did not travel to Greenland until the summer of 1931, together with Kurt Wegener , who took over the management of the expedition after the death of his brother. Together with Kurt Wölcken and Ernst Sorge , Brockamp was able to carry out a series of seismic measurements that for the first time provided reliable information about the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet. After a few years with Niels Erik Nørlund in Copenhagen , he completed his habilitation in 1936 with a paper on the scientific results of the Wegener expedition. Appointed Vice President of the Reich Office for Soil Research , he turned to applied geophysics. After founding the Society for Practical Deposit Research (PRAKLA), he was its first director.

After being a prisoner of war and denazification - he made it to SS-Hauptsturmführer during the Nazi era - Brockamp became a lecturer in geophysics at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster in 1952 . From 1954 to 1959 he also represented geophysics at the University of Frankfurt am Main on the basis of a teaching position . After he was appointed associate professor in 1957, two years later he took over the management of the newly established Institute for Pure and Applied Geophysics. In 1959 he took part as head of the geophysics group in the International Glaciological Greenland Expedition led by Paul-Émile Victor .

Until his death he chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the German Society for Polar Research , which posthumously awarded him the Weyprecht Medal for outstanding scientific achievements in the polar regions in 1969 . Brockamp had been an honorary member of the German Geophysical Society since 1961 . Since September 23, 1960, the Brockhamp Islands in Antarctica have had his name wrongly spelled .

Fonts (selection)

  • Bernhard Brockamp: About some changes to the Sterneck four-pendulum apparatus . In: supplementary booklets f. applied geophysics 3, 1933
  • Bernhard Brockamp, ​​Ernst Sorge and Kurt Wölcken: Seismics . In: Scientific results of the German Greenland Expedition Alfred Wegener 1929 and 1930–1931 , Volume 2, FA Brockhaus, Leipzig 1933
  • Bernhard Brockamp: The thickness of the Greenland ice sheet . In: Zeitschrift für Gletscherkunde, for Ice Age Research and History of the Climate 23, 1935, pp. 277–285.
  • Bernhard Brockamp: On the formation of German iron ore deposits . Reich Office for Soil Research, Berlin 1942
  • Bernhard Brockamp: On the paleogeography and bitumen management of the Posidonia slate in the German Lias . Reich Office for Soil Research, Berlin 1944
  • Bernhard Brockamp: Extended addendum to the scientific results of the German Greenland Expedition Alfred Wegener , Verl. D. Bayer. Academy of Sciences, Munich, 1959

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Membership numbers of the SS from 323,000 to 323,999 , accessed on January 23, 2012
  2. ↑ Honorary members on the homepage of the German Geophysical Society, accessed on February 8, 2017

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Brockamp, ​​Bernhard
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geophysicist and polar explorer
DATE OF BIRTH October 18, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH Osnabrück
DATE OF DEATH 20th December 1968
Place of death Osnabrück