Fritz Hans Schweingruber

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Fritz Hans Schweingruber (born February 29, 1936 in Krauchthal , Canton Bern ; † January 7, 2020 in Birmensdorf , Canton Zurich ) was a Swiss dendrochronologist and university professor for forest dynamics and dendro sciences.

Life

Fritz Schweingruber was first a primary school teacher and organist. Until 1965 he taught at multi-class schools in the Emmental for nine years . He then studied botany, zoology, geology as well as prehistory and early history at the University of Bern and then wood biology at the ETH Zurich . An encounter with the Austrian botanist Bruno Huber aroused his interest in dendrochronological research. In 1972 he received his doctorate in systematic plant sociology.

After a time as a biology teacher at the Köniz high school near Bern and at the private school Dr. Feusi began in 1971 to work at the Federal Research Institute for Forests, Snow and Landscape WSL in Birmensdorf. There he built up the research group dendrochronology. In 1976 he received an extraordinary professorship at the University of Basel with a habilitation in “Prehistoric Wood”.

Research / work

At the WSL, Schweingruber set up the northern hemisphere dendroclimatological data network in collaboration with Keith Briffa (Climatic Research Unit Norwich), Evgeni Waganow ( Siberian Federal University Krasnoyarsk ) and Stepan Schijatow ( Ural Federal University Yekaterinburg ). To this end, he organized expeditions in Western Europe, the USA, Canada and Siberia. He trained students at the Universities of Basel. Zurich, Bern, Stuttgart, Grenoble, Marseille, Tehran and Abakan (Russia). He initiated the “International dendro-ecological field weeks” (from 1986) and the “International dendro-anatomical weeks” (from 2001) and headed them until 2019.

His publications include the textbooks The Tree Ring , Dendroecology , Wood Structure and Environment , Microscopic Wood Anatomy and European Wood Anatomy , and The Plant Stem .

Since his retirement in 2001 he had a guest right at the Federal Research Institute WSL and continued research with a focus on the taxonomic-anatomic-dendrochronological analysis of herbs and dwarf shrubs. A central project was the age determination and anatomy of high mountain plants in the Alps and the Himalayas.

Memberships and honors

Publications (selection)

  • 1976: Prehistoric wood - the importance of wood finds from Central Europe for the solution of archaeological and vegetation problems. DNB 770057489
  • 1993: Tree rings and the environment. Dendroecology. Extended script for the lecture dendrochronology at the Botanical Institute of the University of Basel. Dora Repository 10276
  • 2001: Dendroecological Wood Anatomy - Anatomical Basics of Dendrochronology. DNB 960532617
  • 2007: Wood structure and environment. DNB 983417539
  • 2012: The tree ring - location, methodology, time and climate in dendrochronology. DNB 1027396968
  • 2016: Microscopic wood anatomy - shape spectra of central European trunk and twig wood for the determination of recent and subfossil material. DNB 1096497689
  • 2018: The Plant Stem - A Microscopic Aspect. DNB 1161183906
  • 2018: Anatomy, Age and Ecology of High Mountain Plants in Ladakh, the Western Himalaya. DNB 1153354217
  • 2019: Anatomy of culms and rhizomes of sedges - Atlas of Central European Cyperaceae (Poales), Volume 2. DNB 119596353X
  • 2019: Photographic atlas for the microscopic identification of twigs of selected Central European trees and shrubs. DNB 1176833278

Web links

  • Fritz Schweingruber on the website of the Federal Research Institute for Forests, Snow and Landscape WSL

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Obituary notice Prof. Dr. Fritz Schweingruber , NZZ from January 10, 2020
  2. ^ Fritz Schweingruber Honorary President of ATR. Retrieved January 14, 2020 .
  3. ↑ Prof. Dr. Fritz Schweingruber from Switzerland has been formally elected as a new Honorary Member of the IAWA_IAWA website. Retrieved November 10, 2018 .
personal data
SURNAME Schweingruber, Fritz Hans
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Schweingruber – Stalder, Fritz Hans
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss tree ring researcher and university professor
DATE OF BIRTH February 29, 1936
PLACE OF BIRTH Krauchthal , Switzerland
DATE OF DEATH January 7, 2020
Place of death Birmensdorf , Switzerland