Heinrich Dieter Holland

Heinrich Dieter "Dick" Holland (born May 27, 1927 in Mannheim ; † May 21, 2012 in Wynnewood , Montgomery County ) was a German-American geochemist .

Life

Holland was born in Mannheim and, as a Jew, escaped to Great Britain on the Kindertransport from the National Socialists . He met his family again in the Dominican Republic and moved with them to the USA in Kew Gardens ( New York ) in 1940 . He studied chemistry at Princeton University with a bachelor's degree in 1946, spent two years in the US Army on secret projects in connection with the group of rocket specialists around Wernher von Braun, and from 1947 continued his studies at Columbia University with a master’s degree in Geology in 1948 and a doctorate in geology in 1952. He worked there with the geochemist Laurence Kulp . In 1950 he went to Princeton University, where he rose from instructor to professor, and from 1972 he was professor at Harvard University . From 1978 he acted there as director of the Center for Earth and Planetary Physics . In 2006 he retired there (as Harry C. Dudley Professor of Economic Geology ). He did research as a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania until his death.

Among other things, he was visiting professor and visiting scholar at the University of Oxford (1956/57 as NSF Fellow), Durham University (1963/64, Fulbright Lecturer), Heidelberg University , Imperial College London , Hebrew University in Jerusalem and the university Hawaii (1968/69, 1981).

Holland initially studied the thermodynamics of hydrothermal ore deposits and the stability of carbonates. Later his interest shifted to the chemical evolution of the earth's atmosphere and oceans. In an essay in 1962 he established the idea of ​​a transition from a strongly reducing to an oxidizing atmosphere in the course of the earth's history.

In 1998 he received the Leopold von Buch badge . He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1974). In 1996 he became a Fellow of the Geochemical Society , of which he was director from 1964 to 1967, of which he was vice president from 1969/70 and of which he was president from 1978 to 1971. In 1994 he received their VM Goldschmidt Award and in 1973 and 1979 their FW Clarke Award. In 1980/81 he was the Alexander von Humboldt Research Prize Winner, and in 1995 he received the Penrose Gold Medal . In 1975/76 he was a Guggenheim Fellow. He was a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the Geological Society of America .

Fonts

• The Chemistry of the Atmosphere and Oceans , Wiley 1978, ISBN 978-0-471-03509-1
• The Chemical Evolution of the Ocean and Atmosphere , Princeton University Press, 1984, ISBN 978-0-691-02381-6
• with Ulrich Petersen: Living Dangerously , Princeton University Press, 1995, ISBN 978-0-691-03266-5
• The geological history of sea water. In: Holland, Karl Turekian et al. (Ed.): Treatise on Geochemistry , Volume 6, Elsevier 2003, ISBN 0-08-044341-9 , pp. 583–625 ( PDF )

Web links

• James Drever, Mark Logsdon, Hiroshi Ohmoto: In Memoriam: Heinrich (Dick) Holland (1927-2012). Obituary with biographical data

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Date of birth according to American Men and Women of Science , Thomson Gale 2004
2. ^ Holland: Model for the evolution of the earth's atmosphere. In: Petrologic Studies: A volume to honor AF Buddington. Geological Society of America, 1962, pp. 447-477.