Herbert Stradner

Herbert Stradner (* 1925 ) is an Austrian paleontologist who specializes in nannoplankton .

Stradner first studied medicine, then became a teacher and then studied botany and paleobotany. In 1956 he received his doctorate in Vienna on fossil silicoflagellates in the Tertiary of Austria. From 1960 until his retirement in 1990 he worked for the Federal Geological Institute . There he set up a laboratory for nannoplankton. He participated in the Glomar Challenger's deep-sea drilling explorations in 1970, 1978 and 1980 .

Stradner is a pioneer of nannoplankton research (calcareous nannoplankton, fossil silicoflagelatten, archaeomonads, diatoms, etc.) and recognized their importance for stratigraphy. It began in 1959 with a publication on the importance of discoasterides for stratigraphy at the 5th World Petroleum Congress. At that time he was still a teacher. He offered an oil company to test his thesis on their drill cores from the Matzen oil field north of Vienna and was thus able to differentiate between the uppermost Oligocene for the first time. He continued to advise oil companies after his retirement. His work on stratigraphy with nannoplankton was also of great importance for the elucidation of the development of the Eastern Alps and ensured the dating of the sediments in many of the geological maps created during the Austrian survey.

He was one of the founders of the International Nannoplankton Association and one of the organizers of the first INA conference in Vienna in 1985.

He named around 100 new taxa and published 70 scientific papers.

In 2017 he received the Eduard Suess Medal .

Web links

• Benjamin Sames on the award of the Eduard Sueß Medal to Stradner (with a link to the acknowledgment of Hans Egger)