Hagbard Jonassen

Hagbard Jonassen (born May 24, 1903 in Humlum , † March 1, 1977 in Gentofte ) was a Danish palynologist and peace activist ( pacifist ).

After graduating from high school in Viborg, Jonassen worked for the East Asian Company for a few years. From 1928 he studied natural sciences at the University of Copenhagen with a master’s degree in 1932. Afterwards he was assistant to the botanist Knud Jessen , whom he supported in his studies of the Irish and Danish vegetation history. He published relatively little (he also contributed to Jessen's essays that he did not want to co-author), but his 1950 doctoral thesis was influential in palynology. He showed how information about the surrounding vegetation and the deposition of the pollen varieties of various plant species and forms of vegetation could be obtained from pollen in moss cushions, which was also of importance for Quaternary geology and the interpretation of pollen diagrams. For example, he concluded that West Jutland was previously covered by forest and that the heather only penetrated through slash and burn man.

From 1935 he was a high school teacher in Sortedam and from 1939 in Aurehøj, where he became a lecturer in 1951. With Mogens Lange he wrote a textbook on biogeography.

In 1926 he co-founded the movement Never Again War (Aldrig Mere Krig), the Danish branch of War Resistors International, and from 1936 to 1942 its president. In 1944 he co-founded the later Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke with Svend Haugaard , a non-profit organization for international cooperation with developing countries. In the 1960s he was active against nuclear weapons. He is buried in Søllerød .

Fonts

• Recent pollen sedimentation and Jutland heath diagrams, Dansk Botanisk Arkiv 13, 1950, Copenhagen: Munksgaard (dissertation)
• with Mogens B. Lange: Biogeografi, Gyldendal, 1966

Web links

• Thanks to Biografisk Leksikon