Brunk Meyer

Brunk Meyer

Brunk Meyer (born June 26, 1926 in Berlin , † September 1, 2005 in Göttingen ) was a German soil scientist . As the successor to Fritz Scheffer , he taught from 1967 to 1997 at the Institute for Soil Science at the Georg-August University in Göttingen .

Life path

Brunk Meyer, the son of a teacher, attended the Hohenzollern High School in Berlin-Schöneberg until 1943. Due to the war, he lived in Brunkensen (southern Lower Saxony), the home of his grandparents, in the following years . He completed an agricultural apprenticeship, worked as a volunteer administrator and passed his Abitur in 1950 in Alfeld (Leine) . After studying geology for one semester at the Technical University of Braunschweig , he moved to the University of Göttingen in the same year and studied agriculture. While still a student, he found his scientific home in the Agricultural Chemicals and Soil Science Institute.

After graduating as a farmer, Meyer received his doctorate in 1955 from Fritz Scheffer with a dissertation on the soil conditions in southern Lower Saxony. He continued to work at the institute as a research assistant. In 1964 he completed his habilitation with several papers on soil development and stratigraphy in loess landscapes . In connection with structural changes at the Agricultural Faculty of Göttingen University, the Agricultural Chemistry and Soil Science Institute was divided into an Institute for Agricultural Chemistry and an Institute for Soil Science. As the successor to Fritz Scheffer, Meyer was appointed to the Chair of Soil Science in 1967 and he was made head of the Institute of Soil Science. In 1997 Meyer retired, but managed the institute until 2000 by representing himself. He found his final resting place in the cemetery in Göttingen-Herberhausen .

Research and Teaching

In research and teaching, Meyer represented all areas of the subject of soil science , i.e. soil genetics, soil geography , soil physics , soil chemistry, soil biology, soil mineralogy, soil hydrology and, as applied soil science, all areas of the site theory important for plant production. Given his comprehensive understanding of the discipline, it was only logical that in 1977 he changed the name of his institute to “Institute for Soil Sciences”.

In his research activities three main focuses are visible: in the first fifteen years questions about soil development, especially on loess, were in the foreground. Then there were problems with nutrient dynamics. Since around 1980 he has been increasingly interested in the still current nitrogen question in agriculture and the creation of nitrogen balances . As a continuation of this research work, several of his students founded engineering offices and established a successful water protection area consultancy in Northern Germany. During his tenure, Meyer supervised 362 diploma theses and 100 dissertations. Ten of his students completed their habilitation.

Meyer was an enthusiastic and inspiring university professor. Participation in his didactically excellent lectures was “an absolute must” for all students at the Göttingen Agricultural Faculty. This was even more true of his legendary excursions in all parts of Germany and in numerous European countries, which were not only specialist excursions, but also cross-disciplinary educational trips for most of the participants due to the inclusion of cultural landscape aspects.

Bringing scientific knowledge closer to agricultural practice was an affair of the heart for Meyer. In countless lectures he has spoken to farmers and has repeatedly taken a position on current problems in agriculture on land radio programs of regional broadcasters. Meyer was a committed member of numerous specialist societies and science-oriented associations. The "Göttingen Association of Friends of Nature Research" made him an honorary member posthumously in 2007. Meyer played a key role in shaping the establishment and structure of the German Soil Science Society . From 1955 to 1976 he was managing director of this scientific society.

Fonts

• Basics and results of an investigation of the soil conditions in southern Lower Saxony . Diss. Agr. Göttingen 1955.
• Ice wedges in loess profiles in southern Lower Saxony and northern Hesse (together with H. Rodenburg). In: Heinrich Rodenburg: On the fine stratigraphy and paleopedology of the Young Pleistocene on loess profiles in southern Lower Saxony and northern Hesse . Catena-Verlag Cremlingen-Destedt 1979 = Landschaftsgenese und Landschaftsökologie, issue 3, pp. 2–86.
• Most of Brunk Meyer's scientific work and the work of his students and staff that emerged in his institute are published in the communications of the German Soil Science Society and in the Göttinger Soil Scientific Reports series (vol. 1–115, vol. 1968–2002).

literature

• C. Ahl: Obituary for Prof. Dr. Brunk Meyer . In: News of the German Soil Science Society No. 24/2, 2005, pp. 84–85 (with picture).

Web links

• Literature by and about Brunk Meyer in the catalog of the German National Library