Georg Wüst

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Georg Adolf Otto Wüst (born June 15, 1890 in Posen , † November 8, 1977 in Erlangen ) was a German oceanographer. His pioneering work on the Atlantic gave a new picture of water movements between the northern and southern hemisphere and showed for the first time that the spread of water masses is concentrated in western marginal currents.

Life

Wüst was the son of the Prussian civil servants Max and Clara Wüst. The family soon moved to Berlin. There he attended the Charlottenburg high school and then studied geography and oceanography, as well as meteorology, mathematics and physics, at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin from 1910. His most important teachers were Albrecht Penck , who had been the head of the geographic department with the Museum für Meereskunde (Berlin) at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin (see Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin ) since 1905 , and above all his later successor from 1910, the Austrian hydrograph Alfred Merz . In 1920 the Institute and Museum for Oceanography became an independent institution with Merz as director.

In 1912 Merz sent Wüst to Bjørn Helland-Hansen in Bergen / Norway to get to know the methods of his Scandinavian colleagues. He gained practical experience at sea in observation programs on German lightships, on survey ships and on trips with the Armauer Hansen in the European North Sea under the direction of Helland-Hansen. Merz was his supervisor for the dissertation on evaporation measurements at sea. The doctoral examination took place on August 28, 1914. But it was only after the First World War that the official doctorate on June 30, 1919 could take place with the printed dissertation. During the First World War, Wüst served as a meteorologist and was wounded near Verdun in 1917. After the war he became an assistant at Merz in 1919 and then took part in several research trips in the North and Baltic Seas.

Merz planned a systematic hydrographic survey of the Atlantic. His proposal was approved by the Notgemeinschaft der Deutschen Wissenschaft (later the German Research Foundation ) in 1924 . The naval survey ship Meteor was made available to survey the South Atlantic and the North Atlantic up to 30 ° N. Wüst played a key role in many planning and took part in the German Atlantic Expedition from April 1925 to July 1927 . After the premature death of the expedition leader Merz in Buenos Aires in June 1925, he took over the management of the oceanographic work.

After the expedition, Wüst worked at the Berlin Institute primarily on evaluating the data from this trip. In 1929 he became curator at the Berlin Institute for Oceanography, completed his habilitation in the same year at the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Berlin with a treatise on the Florida current and was appointed professor in 1936. Wüst had meanwhile become a recognized member of the international marine research community. When the Second World War came, all these connections were broken. Wüst had become a member of the NSDAP in 1933 (see Kiel list of scholars ) and served during the war as a member of the nautical and scientific staff at the naval high command. Parallel to the war-related activities, however, he continued to teach at the Friedrich Wilhelms University in Berlin.

The Institute for Oceanography in Berlin was destroyed by bombing in 1944 and was not rebuilt after the end of the war. At the beginning of 1946 Wüst received the offer to rebuild the Institute for Oceanography at Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel as Director and Professor for Oceanography and Maritime Meteorology. The Kiel Institute had lost its institute building including numerous employees in a bomb attack in 1944. After the new start in 1946, Wüst managed to bring back some of the former employees, move into rooms in an old villa on the west bank of Kiel, maintain the research cutter Südfall and get teaching going again. The Kiel Institute had previously been mainly concerned with biological work in the North and Baltic Seas, but also had a history in the field of hydrography, marine chemistry and marine geology. Wüst brought his experience with deep sea research, especially in physical and chemical oceanography, to the new institute development. He and, from 1959, his successor Günter Dietrich , who had previously worked with Wüst in Berlin, ensured that the Kiel Institute took on the legacy of the Berlin Institute for Oceanography in its scientific orientation and teaching. The connection to the University of Kiel was close. From 1950 to 1952 Wüst was the dean of the Philosophical Faculty, which at the time also included mathematics and the natural sciences.

After his retirement he accepted an invitation as a visiting professor at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory at Columbia University in New York. A focus of his work during this stay were studies of the circulation in the Caribbean. During his stay in New York from 1960 to 1964, he also accepted an invitation to the Walker Ames Chair at the University of Washington in Seattle in the spring of 1962 . After returning to Germany he was visiting professor at the Meteorological Institute of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn until 1967 .

Georg Wüst was married to Martha Wüst from 1921 to 1941. The marriage has two children. From 1943 he was married to Maria Wüst ( Kieler Scholars' Directory ) for the second time .

Scientific work

Wüst was characterized by the fact that, with the description of oceanic data, he was able to achieve a deep understanding of exchange processes, the formation of water masses and their large-scale movements and transports. His main topics were: evaporation, precipitation and the water balance of the sea, the large-scale distribution and circulation of the deep water masses in the Atlantic and in the other oceans, movements in the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio, the formation of polar bottom water and the circulation in the European Mediterranean. In his later years, presentations on the history of deep sea research followed. In his contribution to the book with which Wüst was honored on his 80th birthday, Dietrich has compiled a complete list of the 112 publications by Wüst.

For his dissertation, Wüst carried out systematic evaporation measurements on selected ships, developed suitable calculation methods and discussed the evaporation distribution in the ocean. Over the course of several decades, he repeatedly dealt with the relationship between evaporation, precipitation and salt content distribution in the sea and their significance for the water cycle.

In the years 1920–1924, preparations for the Meteor Expedition (1925–1927) dominated together with Alfred Merz. From these years, too, there are already several works on the Atlantic vertical circulation with a significant exchange between the northern and southern hemisphere and the Florida and Antilles currents, which were later to be followed by further works on the Gulf Stream and Kuroshio. After his participation in the Meteor expedition, his most productive years followed with the processing of the data of the Atlantic expedition in coordination with Albert Defant . The expedition work Scientific Results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the surveying and research ship "Meteor" was created. His investigations into the large-scale distribution of the Atlantic water masses and their source areas were groundbreaking. They showed the strong interhemispheric exchange of water masses and for the first time provided evidence that the spread of water masses is concentrated in western marginal currents. An essential aid was the core layer method developed by Wüst, which made it possible to draw conclusions about water mass movement and mixing from the distribution of temperature and salt content. The "Meteor" work was later considered so important that the US National Science Foundation allowed W. J. Emery to translate it into English and print it in English. To this day, the data set is considered an important basis for Atlantic research.

His work was not limited to the Atlantic, other oceans were examined comparatively. A special interest was shown in the formation and spread of deep ground water. Wüst also carried out important studies of secondary seas. He showed early on that sinking movements in the Sea of ​​Okhotsk create masses of water that are a source of the North Pacific intermediate waters. His depictions of the deep circulation of the European Mediterranean Sea became an important basis for later investigations; his work on the circulation in the Caribbean was groundbreaking. He was also involved in some studies on the hydrography of the Baltic Sea. His geographical interests were shown again and again in studies of the bottom topography of the oceans.

Wüst always wanted to proceed systematically. He therefore saw the network of regularly arranged stations of the Meteor Expedition 1925/27 as a model for the International Indian Ocean Expedition (IIOE) 1959-1965. However, the time was not yet ripe for his proposal. It was not until the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) 1990–1998 that a similar observation pattern was chosen in the Indian Ocean. Various of his later works then dealt with aspects of the history of marine research, in particular the development of oceanography and important deep-sea expeditions.

Awards and honors

The German Society for Marine Research has awarded the Georg Wüst Award since 2005. Wüst is the namesake for the Wüst Inlet , an icy bay on the east coast of the Palmerland in Antarctica.

Publications

  • Georg Wüst: The oceanographic observation material (serial measurements ) In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the surveying and research ship "Meteor" 1925–1927 (= Volume IV, Part II). Berlin 1932, pp. 1-290.
  • Georg Wüst: Bottom water and bottom configuration of the Atlantic deep sea. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. Berlin 1933, pp. 42-49.
  • Georg Wüst: Signs of relationships between ground currents and relief in the deep sea of ​​the Indian Ocean. In: Natural Sciences. 22, No. 16, Berlin 1934, pp. 241-244.
  • Georg Wüst: On the question of the Indian deep current. In: Natural Sciences. 23, No. 9, Berlin 1935, pp. 137-139.
  • Georg Wüst: Bottom water and bottom configuration of the Atlantic deep sea. In: Journal of Geophysics. 11, No. 1/2 Braunschweig 1935, pp. 40–49.
  • Georg Wüst: The Stratosphere of the Atlantic Ocean In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the survey and research ship "Meteor" 1925–1927 (= Volume VI, 2nd delivery). Berlin 1935, pp. 1–144, 253–28 (English The Stratosphere of the Atlantic Ocean translated by the Al-Ahram Center for Scientific Translations, Translation edited by William J. Emery, Amerind Publishing Co. Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi, 1978, 1-112).
  • Georg Wüst: The horizontal maps results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the surveying and research ship “Meteor” 1925–1927 (= Part A of the “Atlas” to Volume VI, Supplement XLVII-XCL). Berlin 1936.
  • Georg Wüst: The divisions of the oceans. In: The Hydrographic Review. XXII, No. 2 Monaco 1936, pp. 36-54.
  • Georg Wüst: The exploration of the soil configuration of the Austral-Asiatic Mediterranean Sea by the Dutch "Snellius" expedition. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. Berlin 1936, pp. 347-358.
  • Georg Wüst: Kuroshio and Gulf Stream. A comparative hydrodynamic investigation In: Publications of the Institute for Oceanography (= New Series Series A, Issue 29). Berlin 1936, pp. 1-69.
  • Georg Wüst: Temperature and vapor pressure gradient in the lowest meters above the sea surface. In: Meteorological Journal. Braunschweig 1937, pp. 4-9.
  • Georg Wüst: Soil temperature and soil current in the Pacific deep sea In: Publications of the Institute for Oceanography (= New Series Series A, Issue 35). Berlin 1937, pp. 1-56.
  • Georg Wüst: Newer views on the nature of the Gulf Stream system and the naming of its members In: Der Seewart (= 10/11 ). Hamburg 1937, pp. 359-367.
  • Georg Wüst: Soil temperature and current in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific deep sea. In: Gerland's contributions to geophysics. Braunschweig 1938, 54 No. 1 pp. 1-8.
  • Georg Wüst: The great structure of the Atlantic deep sea floor. In: Geologische Rundschau. XXX, No. 1/2, Stuttgart 1935, pp. 132-137.
  • Georg Wüst: Relief and bottom water in the north polar basin. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. Berlin 1941, pp. 163-180.
  • Georg Wüst: The morphological and oceanographic conditions of the north polar basin. In: "Publications of the German Scientific Institute (DWI) in Copenhagen", Series 1: Arktis, No. 6. Borntraeger Brothers, Berlin 1942.
  • Georg Wüst: The subarctic ground current in the west Atlantic basin. In: Annals of Hydrography and Maritime Meteorology. Berlin 1943, pp. 249-255.
  • Georg Wüst: Block diagrams of the Atlantic circulation based on the "Meteor" results. In: Kieler Meeresforschungen, 7, No. 1. Kiel 1950, pp. 24-34.
  • Georg Wüst: Water vapor and precipitation on the sea as links in the water cycle (with special consideration of the results of the "Meteor" expedition and recent work). In: German Hydrographic Journal. Hamburg 1950, pp. 111-127.
  • Georg Wüst: The greatest depths of the ocean in a critical view. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. Berlin 1950/51, pp. 203-214.
  • Georg Wüst: Lawful interrelationships between ocean and atmosphere in the zonal distribution of surface salinity, evaporation and precipitation. In: Archives for Meteorology and Bioclimatology. (= A No. 7). Vienna 1954, pp. 305–328.
  • Georg Wüst: Results of a hydrographic-production-biological longitudinal section through the Baltic Sea in the summer of 1956. Part 1: The distribution of temperature, salinity and density. In: Kiel Marine Research. Kiel 1956, (= 13 No. 2). Pp. 163-185.
  • Georg Wüst: The deep circulation of the Mediterranean Sea in the core layers of the intermediate and deep water. In: German Hydrographic Journal. Hamburg 1960, 13 No. 3 pp. 105-131.
  • Georg Wüst: The bottom water and the vertical circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. In: German Hydrographic Journal. Hamburg 1960, 14 No. 3 pp. 81-92.
  • Georg Wüst: On the vertical circulation of the Mediterranean Sea. In: Journal of Geophysical Research. New York 1963, 10 pp. 163-167.
  • Georg Wüst: The major deep-sea expeditions and research vessels 1873-1960 - A contribution to the history of oceanography. In: Progress in Oceanography. London-New York 1964, 2 pp. 1-52.
  • Georg Wüst: Stratification and circulation in the Antillean-Caribbean basins In: Vema-Research Series (= 2 ). New York 1964, pp. 1-201.
  • Georg Wüst: Water and heat balance and circulation in the warm water sphere of the Caribbean Sea. In: Kiel Marine Research. Kiel 1965, (= 21 No. 1). Pp. 3-11.
  • Georg Wüst et al .: The University's Institute for Oceanography after its reconstruction. In: Kiel Marine Research. Kiel 1965 (= 21 ). Pp. 127-153.
  • Georg Wüst: History of the investigations about the longitudinal deep-sea circulation (1800-1922). In: Bulletin Institut Océanographique Monaco. 1968, Numéro 2 pp. 109-120.

literature

  • Fritz Spiess: The Meteor Ride. Research and experiences of the German Atlantic Expedition. Dietrich Reimers, Berlin 1928, pp. 1-375.
  • Hans Ulrich Roll: Georg Wüst, 1890–1977. In: DGM-Mitteilungen. German Society for Marine Research, Hamburg 1987, pp. 25–28.
  • Wolfgang Schott: Early German Oceanographic Institutions, Expeditions and Oceanographers In: Fourth International Congress on the History of Oceanography. German Hydrographic Institute, Hamburg 1987, pp. 42-43.
  • Hartwig Weidemann: Georg Wüst and the Kiel Institute for Oceanography (for the 100th birthday on June 15, 1990). In: DGM-Mitteilungen. German Society for Marine Research, Hamburg 1990, pp. 10-11.
  • Gerhard Kortum: Wüst, Georg. In: "Koertge, N. (Ed.): New Dictionary of Scientific Biography." (= 25. ) Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9 , pp. 373-376.

Web links

  1. ↑ [1] SSOAR website. Retrieved September 25, 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Hans Ulrich Roll: Georg Wüst, 1890–1977. In: DGM-Mitteilungen. German Society for Marine Research, Hamburg 1987, pp. 25–28.
  2. ↑ a b c Gerhard Kortum: Wüst, Georg. In: Koertge, N. (Ed.): New Dictionary of Scientific Biography. (= 25. ) Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9 , pp. 373-376.
  3. ↑ a b Theodor Stocks: Georg Wüst and his position in modern oceanography. In: Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen 1960, pp. 292–205.
  4. ↑ a b Georg Wüst: The evaporation on the sea In: Publications of the Institute for Oceanography (= New Series Series A, Issue 6). Berlin 1920, pp. 1-96.
  5. ↑ a b c Fritz Spiess: The Meteor Ride. Research and experiences of the German Atlantic Expedition. Dietrich Reimers, Berlin 1928, pp. 1-375.
  6. ^ A b Walter Zenk, Gerold Siedler, Peter C. Wille, Gerd Wegner, Jörn Thiede, Volker Storch, Peter Speth, Eberhard Ruprecht, Manfred Ehrhardt, Bernt Zeitzschel: "Early oceanography and the development of physical and chemical marine sciences in Kiel after World War II. " In: "Deutsches Schiffahrtsarchiv, Wissenschaftliches Jahrbuch des Deutschen Schiffahrtsmuseums", Bremerhaven, 39, 2018, (stated publication date 2016, but actually published 2018), ISSN  0343-3668 , ISBN 978-3-86927-039-5 , p. 41– 72.
  7. ↑ Hans-Jürgen Brosin: On the history of marine research in the GDR. In: Marine Scientific Reports. (= 17. ). Warnemünde 1996, pp. 1-212.
  8. ^ Georg Wüst et al .: The Institute for Oceanography of the University of Kiel. In: Kiel Marine Research. Kiel 1956, (= 12 No. 2). Pp. 127-153.
  9. ^ Arnold L. Gordon: Editor's Preface. In: Arnold L. Gordon (Ed.): Studies in Physical Oceanography (= 1. ). Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, New York 1972, pp. V-vi.
  10. ^ Arnold L. Gordon: Georg Wüst's Scientific Work. Dedication to His Eightieth Birthday. In: Arnold L. Gordon (Ed.): Studies in Physical Oceanography (= 1. ). Gordon and Breach Science Publishers, New York 1972, pp. Xi-xx.
  11. ↑ Georg Wüst: Evaporation and Precipitation on Earth. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. 1922, pp. 33-43.
  12. ^ Alfred Merz, Georg Wüst: The Atlantic vertical circulation. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. 1922, pp. 1-35.
  13. ↑ Georg Wüst: Florida and Antilles currents - a hydrodynamic investigation In: Publications of the Institute for Oceanography (= New Series Series A, Issue 12). Berlin 1924, pp. 1-48.
  14. ^ Georg Wüst: The Gulf Stream. In: Journal of the Society for Geography. 1930, pp. 42-49.
  15. ↑ Georg Wüst: Oceanographic Instruments and Methods In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the survey and research ship "Meteor" 1925–1927 (= Vol. IV, No. 1 ). Berlin 1932, 21 pp.
  16. ^ Philip L. Richardson: On the history of meridional overturning circulation schematic diagrams. In: Progress in Oceanography. (= 76. ). 2008, pp. 466-486.
  17. ↑ Georg Wüst: The vertical sections of the temperature, the salinity and the density In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the surveying and research ship "Meteor" 1925-1927 (= Part A of the "Atlas" to Volume VI, Appendix II-XLVI) . Berlin 1936.
  18. ^ John Gould et al .: Ocean Observations. In: Gerold Siedler et al. (Ed.): Ocean Circulation and Climate - A 21st Century Perspective . Elsevier - Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2013, pp. 59-81.
  19. ↑ Georg Wüst: Stratification and deep circulation of the Pacific Ocean on the basis of two longitudinal sections In: Publications of the Institute for Oceanography (= New Series Series A, Issue 20). Berlin 1929, pp. 1-64.
  20. ↑ Georg Wüst: The bottom water and the structure of the Atlantic deep sea. In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the survey and research ship "Meteor" 1925–1927 (= Volume VI, 1st delivery). Berlin 1933, pp. 1–107.
  21. ↑ Georg Wüst: Meridional stratification and deep circulation in the western halves of the three oceans. In: Journal du Conseil / Conseil Permanent International pour l'Exploration de la Mer. (= 5 (1) ) 1930, pp. 42-49.
  22. ↑ Janet Sprintall et al .: Interocean and Interbasin Exchanges. In: Gerold Siedler et al. (Ed.): Ocean Circulation and Climate - A 21st Century Perspective . Elsevier - Academic Press, Amsterdam, 2013, pp. 493-518.
  23. ^ Georg Wüst: Remarks on the circulation of the intermediate and deep water masses in the Mediterranean Sea and the methods of their further exploration. In: Annali Instituto Universitario Navale. Naples 1959, 28, 12 pp.
  24. ^ Georg Wüst: On the stratification and circulation of the cold water sphere of the Caribbean-Antillean basins. In: Deep-Sea Research. London-New York 1963, 10 pp. 163-167.
  25. ↑ Georg Wüst, W. Brogmus: Oceanographic results of an investigation voyage with the research cutter "Südfall" through the Baltic Sea June / July 1954 In: Kieler Meeresforschungen. Kiel 1955, (= 11 No. 1). Pp. 3-21.
  26. ↑ Theodor Stocks, Georg Wüst: The depths of the open Atlantic Ocean (accompanying words to the overview map 1:20 Mill) In: Scientific results of the German Atlantic Expedition on the survey and research ship "Meteor" 1925–1927 (= Volume III, 1st part) . Berlin 1935, pp. 1–32.
  27. ^ Warren S. Wooster: International studies of the Indian Ocean, 1959-1965. In: Deep-Sea Research Part A. 1984, 31 6/8 pp. 6-8 pp. 589-597.
  28. ^ Georg Wüst: Proposed International Indian Oceanographic Expedition 1962–1963. In: Deep-Sea Research. Oxford 1960, 6 No. 3 pp. 245-249.
  29. ^ Georg Wüst: Representative deep-sea expeditions and research ships 1873-1960. In: Naturwissenschaftliche Rundschau. 1963, 16 No. 6 pp. 211-214.
  30. ↑ Wüst Award. Retrieved August 4, 2016 .
personal data
SURNAME Wüst, Georg
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wüst, Georg Adolf Otto (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German oceanographer
DATE OF BIRTH June 15, 1890
PLACE OF BIRTH Poses
DATE OF DEATH November 8, 1977
Place of death gain