Fritz Müller (glaciologist)

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Fritz Müller (born April 16, 1926 in Sünikon ; † July 26, 1980 on the Rhone Glacier ) was a Swiss geographer and glaciologist .

Live and act

After training as a primary school teacher and four years in school, Fritz Müller enrolled at the University of Zurich in 1950 . Between 1952 and 1953, as a participant in an expedition led by Lauge Koch , he investigated structural soils in northern Greenland for two summers . He then examined pingos , first in East Greenland , and later, between 1954 and 1955, as part of two McGill University expeditions in the Mackenzie Delta in northern Canada . This topic, on which he received his doctorate in Zurich in 1959 , shifted his interests from geomorphology more to glaciology . Previously, in 1956, Fritz Müller took part as a scientist in the Swiss Mount Everest-Lhotse Expedition of the Swiss Foundation for Alpine Research , where he carried out investigations on the Khumbu Icefall . He then worked for two years at the Research Institute for Hydraulic Engineering at ETH Zurich .

In 1959 he became head of the McGill University-run research project on Axel Heiberg Island in northern Canada, which he oversaw until his death. As part of this project, excursions took place every year, including a series of measurements on the mass balance of White Glacier , with 38.9 km² one of the very few large subpolar glaciers for which such series of measurements are available. In 1961 he became an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal . After being elected professor of geography with a focus on glaciology at the ETH Zurich in 1970 , he returned to Switzerland. He remained an honorary professor at McGill University and took another project addressed in the Canadian Arctic, which focused on the exploration of the northern waters ( North Water polynya ) in the Baffin Bay .

At the end of the 1960s, Fritz Müller was involved in the activities to compile a global glacier inventory . As part of this activity, he published, among other things, the Swiss glacier inventory of 1973. In 1976 he became head of the Temporary Technical Secretariat (TTS), whose task was to promote the creation of the global glacier inventory. In the same year he was elected chairman of the Permanent Service on Fluctuations of Glaciers (PSFG) - TTS and PSFG were the predecessor organizations of the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS).

Fritz Müller died of heart failure during an excursion on the Rhone Glacier on July 26, 1980 at the age of 54. He left a wife and two daughters.

Awards / honors

In Fritz Müller's honor, the dominant, approximately 6300 m² plateau glacier in the west of Axel Heiberg Island was renamed Müller- Eiskappe , formerly Akaioa Ice Cap . The Müller Ice Shelf in Lallemand Fjord off the coast of the Antarctic Peninsula was also named after him. This is said to have disintegrated in 1999, according to another source, however, only a clear decline in the ice shelf mass can be recorded.

Publications (selection)

  • Observations about pingos. Detailed surveys in East Greenland and the Canadian Arctic. Dissertation, 1959.
  • Glaciological-climatological study in the North Water (Canadian-Greenlandic High Arctic): Report on the fieldwork from April 1 to September 29, 1974. ETH Zurich, 1974.
  • With Toni Caflisch and Gerhard Müller: Firn and ice in the Swiss Alps: glacier inventory. Geographical Institute of the ETH Zurich, Zurich 1976.
  • Far north. Atlantis Verlag, Zurich 1977

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Editing of the Swiss Lexicon, Glacier Commission of the Swiss Academy of Natural Sciences (ed.): Glaciers, snow and ice. Verlag Schweizer Lexikon Mengis + Ziehr, Horw / Luzern 1993, ISBN 3-9520144-2-7 . P. 96f.
  2. ↑ a b c Jakob Weiß: Fritz Müller. In: Polar Research . Volume 50, pp. 81-82. ( online )
  3. ^ A b C. Simon L Ommanney: Glaciers of Canada. In: Richard S. Williams Jr., Jane G. Ferrigno (Eds.): Satellite Image Atlas of Glaciers of the World - North America. 2002 ( online )
  4. ^ Herbert Lang: Obituary. Fritz Mueller. In: Hydrological Sciences Bulletin. Volume 26, 1981. pp. 332f. ( online ( Memento of the original from October 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note .; PDF; 164 kB) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / iahs.info
  5. ^ Geoffrey Hattersley-Smith: Canadians in Antarctic Place-Names. In: Newsletter for the Canadian Antarctic Research Network. Volume 20, November 2005. pp. 3-8. ( online ; PDF; 5.6 MB)
  6. ↑ Mauri Pelto: Global Outlook of Snow Cover, Sea Ice and Glaciers. In: Vijay P. Singh, Pratap Singh, Umesh K. Haritashya (Eds.): Encyclopedia of Snow, Ice and Glaciers. Springer, Dordrecht 2011, ISBN 978-90-481-2641-5 . P. 464.
  7. ^ The Antarctic Peninsula's retreating ice shelves. Communication from the British Antarctic Survey of April 2015 (accessed July 8, 2016).
personal data
SURNAME Müller, Fritz
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Müller, Fritz Battle
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss geographer and glaciologist
DATE OF BIRTH April 16, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Sünikon
DATE OF DEATH July 26, 1980
Place of death Rhone glacier