Carl Emanuel Burckhardt

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Carl Emanuel Burckhardt (born March 26, 1869 in Basel , † August 26, 1935 in Mexico City ) was a Swiss geologist .

life and work

Carl Emanuel Burckhardt was the son of Wilhelm Burckhardt and Maria Karolina, nee Sarasin. His uncle was Fritz Sarasin . After completing school in Basel and a short stay at the University of Geneva , Burckhardt began to study at the University of Basel in 1888 with the botanist Georg Albrecht Klebs and the geologist Carl Schmidt . Burckhardt founded the “Jurassia” student association with his fellow students. After a few semesters in Basel, Burckhardt continued his studies at the University of Zurich with Carl Schröter and Albert Heim .

At the suggestion of Albert Heim, Burckhardt subjected the northern edge of the Swiss Alps to a study guided by general points of view from 1891 to 1893 and summarized the results obtained in the winter of 1892/1893 into a doctoral dissertation . From 1893 to 1894 Burckhardt was busy collecting fossils from the Klöntal , which he worked on together with Wilhelm Heinrich Waagen in Vienna in the winter of 1894/1895 and became a student of Eduard Suess . In 1895 Burckhardt moved to Munich to receive further training from Karl Alfred von Zittel .

Leo Wehrli with Carl Emanuel Burckhardt in Argentina at the foot of the Planchón-Peteroa volcano
Leo Wehrli and Carl Emanuel Burckhardt at the foot of the Planchón-Peteroa volcano

In 1896 Burckhardt was appointed geologist at the Museo de la Plata in Buenos Aires . Together with Leo Wehrli , who was appointed to the same position as a geologist in the petrographic field in Argentina, he traveled to Argentina at the end of 1896.

A few days after their arrival, accompanied by the director of the museum Rudolph Hauthal, they began their first geological research trip . This lasted from January 12, 1897 to May 17, 1897. During this time, they crossed the Cordillera four times in the section Mendoza and Valparaíso in the north and Loncoche and Molina in the south. In 1898 Burckhardt and Wehrli explored the Andes between Las Lajas in Argentina and Curacautin in Chile . After returning in May 1900, Burckhardt had until the end of 1900 to evaluate his diverse geological observations and the numerous fossil finds from the Cordillera.

In 1901 Burckhardt returned to Munich with his collection, where he was able to further evaluate it under Karl Alfred von Zittel's direction. During this time Ludwig von Ammon appointed Burckhardt as his assistant. Burckhardt registered this position on April 21, 1903, with the "granting of the right to live in the city of Munich". Burckhardt gave up this right a little later when he was appointed to Mexico City in 1904 as chief geologist of the geological institute founded in 1891. In the following eleven years, Burckhardt devoted himself to the Jura and chalk deposits in the states of Zacatecas , Durango , Guerrero , Veracruz and Puebla .

When Porfirio Diaz invited geologists from all over the world to the international congress in Mexico in 1906, Burckhardt led the congress as secretary and led the geologists to Zacatecas , the Sierra de Mazapil and Concepcion del Oro. During the revolutionary turmoil in Mexico, the geological institute was withdrawn from its credit in 1915, with the result that Burckhardt lost his office and position. However , he turned down an appointment to the Natural History Museum Basel and devoted himself to his collections, the evaluation of which he published in the treatises of the Swiss Palaeontological Society in 1930. This work would be the last of his 47 publications.

In 1929 Burckhardt received "in recognition of his fundamental work on the stratigraphy and paleontology of the Jurassic and Chalk Formations of Mexico" an honorary membership of the Swiss Society for Natural Sciences.

Carl Emanuel Burckhardt died of pneumonia. Since Burckhardt and his sister Emma Rosina Burckhardt (1857–1938) had no children, this branch of Burckhardt died out with them.

Fonts

  • August Buxtorf : Carl Burckhardt. In: Negotiations of the Swiss Natural Research Society, Vol. 116, 1935, pp. 425–435 ( digitized version ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Burckhardt Youth and study time
  2. ^ Burckhardt in Klöntal and Munich
  3. ^ Burckhardt in Mexico
  4. ↑ Burckhardt's writings
  5. ↑ Burckhardt's family tree
personal data
SURNAME Burckhardt, Carl Emanuel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss geologist
DATE OF BIRTH March 26, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Basel
DATE OF DEATH August 26, 1935
Place of death Mexico City