Karl Fritsch (meteorologist)

Karl Fritsch (born August 16, 1812 in Prague , † December 26, 1879 in Salzburg ) was an Austrian geophysicist and meteorologist .

Between 1833 and 1836 Fritsch studied law at the university in his hometown. After successfully completing his degree, he got a job as a clerk trainee at the camera gradient administration. End of 1838 he resigned his ministry there was the following year at the Prague University Observatory staff Karl Kreil .

From 1846 to 1848, Fritsch worked together with Kreil on geomagnetic and geographic positioning throughout Austria. When Kreil was entrusted with the management of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics (ZAMG) in Vienna in July 1851 , Fritsch joined him as an adjunct . After Kreil's death in 1862, Fritsch temporarily headed ZAMG and was appointed vice director in 1863.

In 1865 Fritsch founded the Austrian Society for Meteorology together with some colleagues , in which he played a major role until his retirement in 1872. After his retirement in 1872, he settled in Salzburg and took over the management of the city's meteorological station .

Fritsch wrote numerous papers on periodic phenomena in the flora and fauna depending on periodic meteorological phenomena and is therefore considered to be the founder of phenology in Austria. He made a special contribution to the network of synoptic weather observation in Central Europe.

The botanist Karl Fritsch (1864–1934) is his son.

literature

• Fritsch Carl. In: Austrian Biographical Lexicon 1815–1950 (ÖBL). Volume 1, Publishing House of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1957, p. 370 f. (Direct links on p. 370 , p. 371 ).
• Helmut Dolezal:  Fritsch, Carl. In: New German Biography (NDB). Volume 5, Duncker & Humblot, Berlin 1961, ISBN 3-428-00186-9 , p. 626 ( digitized version ).