Friedrich Heller (geologist)

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Friedrich Heller (born April 17, 1939 in Sonthofen ) is a German geologist and geophysicist, known for his contributions to paleomagnetism . He is a professor at the ETH Zurich .

Heller obtained a diploma in geology and received his doctorate in 1972 from the ETH Zurich under Augusto Gansser and Nazario Pavoni ( magnetic and petrographic properties of the granitic rocks of the Albigna area (northern Bergell massif) ). From 1979 he was a private lecturer and from 1990 adjunct professor at the ETH Zurich, where he retired in 2004 . He headed the paleomagnetic laboratory there.

Heller developed a worldwide stratigraphy of loess and other fossil soils (especially in China, Central Asia, Eastern Europe and Argentina) with particular importance for the study of the paleoclimate within the continents. In particular, he used paleomagnetic methods for dating and reconstructing the climate (influence on magnetic susceptibility ). This enabled the correlation with the climatic data from marine sediments .

He dealt with the causes of the magnetism of minerals and he dealt intensively with tectonics , paleomagnetism and the stratigraphy based on it on the Permian-Triassic border in China, Pakistan, the Soviet Union and Italy. He carried out further palaeomagnetic and tectonic studies in the Andes, the Swiss Alps and the Swiss Jura and on the Cretaceous-Tertiary border in Italy.

In addition to studies on paleomagnetism, he is one of the pioneers of studying the environment with magnetic materials ( environmental magnetism), for example in limnology , studies on environmental pollution and biomagnetism.

Heller also examined the relationship between the strength of the earth's magnetic field in the past and radionuclides from cosmic rays in rocks.

In his laboratory he was also involved in the development of new paleomagnetic measuring techniques (such as high field torque magnetometer, coercitivity spectrometer).

In 2007 he received the Louis Néel Medal . He is an honorary doctorate from the University of Kazan (2001).

Fonts

  • with ME Evans: Environmental Magnetism. Principles and Applications of Enviromagnetics. Academic Press, Amsterdam et al. 2003, ISBN 0-12-243851-5 .
  • with ME Evans: Loess magnetism. In: Reviews of Geophysics. Volume 33, 1995, pp. 211-240.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Research Collection of the ETH Zurich, doi: 10.3929 / ethz-a-000087563 : There he is given as a German citizen.
  2. ^ Friedrich Heller, Liu Tung-sheng: Magnetostratigraphical dating of loess deposits in China. In: Nature. Volume 300, 1982, pp. 431-433.
  3. ↑ George Kukla, Friedrich Heller, Liu Xiu Ming, Xu Tong Chun, Liu Tung Sheng: Pleistocene climates in China dated by magnetic susceptibility. In: Geology. Volume 16, 1988, pp. 811-814.
  4. ↑ Laudation for the Néel Medal on the website of the European Geosciences Union (English)
personal data
SURNAME Heller, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist and geophysicist
DATE OF BIRTH April 17, 1939
PLACE OF BIRTH Sonthofen