Martin Glaessner

Martin Fritz Glaessner (born December 25, 1906 in Aussig , † November 23, 1989 in Melbourne ) was an Australian geologist and paleontologist . He was an internationally recognized expert on Precambrian fossils.

Life

Glaessner came from Northern Bohemia and studied law (doctorate in 1929) and geology and palaeontology (doctorate in 1931) at the University of Vienna from 1925 . In addition, he had been a scientist at the Natural History Museum in Vienna since 1923 and at the Natural History Museum in London in 1930/31. From 1932 to 1934 he worked for the State Petroleum Institute in Moscow as a geologist and then at the Institute for Mineral Fuels of the Russian Academy of Sciences. In addition, he gave lectures at the Petroleum Institute and Paleontological Institute of Lomonosov University . In 1936 he married in Moscow. In 1937 he went back to Vienna. Because he had Jewish ancestors through his father, he was briefly arrested in 1938 and then worked for a short time for what would later become BP in London and from 1938 to 1950 in the oil exploration for companies (Joint Oil Exploration Companies) in Port Moresby and Melbourne in Australia as chief -Paleontologist. From 1950 he was at the University of Adelaide , where he stayed for the rest of his career until his death, first as Senior Lecturer, from 1953 as Reader and from 1964 as Professor of Geology and Paleontology. Since 1972 he was Professor Emeritus there. From 1953 he was also associated with the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. In 1971 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina .

In addition to his research on Precambrian fossils (especially Ediacara fauna ) from the 1950s onwards, he had been known for studying microfossils (especially foraminifera ) since the 1930s and continued this work in Australia as a petroleum geologist and, for example, in the stratigraphy of tertiary sediments continued in South Australia.

Honors

Glaessner received the Lyell Medal (1974), the Charles Doolittle Walcott Medal (1982) and the Eduard Sueß commemorative coin from the Austrian Geological Society. In 1957 he became a member of the Australian Academy of Sciences. From 1962 to 1977 he was the Australian National Committee for Geosciences. In 1985 he became a member of the Order of Australia for services in particular in micropalaeontology. 1950 to 1970 he was Honorary Research Associate of the American Museum of Natural History . In 1946 he received a D.Sc. of Melbourne University. In 1983 he became an honorary member of the Paleontological Society .

Fonts

• About a new Miocene crab and the brachyur fauna of the Vienna Basin . Negotiations of the Federal Geological Institute 1924, pp. 109–118 online (PDF; 604 kB)
• New Emyden finds from the Vienna Basin and the fossil Clemmys species from the Mediterranean area . Session reports of the Academy of Sciences, Mathematical and Natural Science Class 135, 1925, s. 51-71 online (PDF; 1.9 MB)
• New investigations into the Grunder layers near Korneuburg . Negotiations of the Federal Geological Institute 1926, pp. 111–125 online (PDF; 787 kB)
• The decapod fauna of the Austrian Young Tertiary . Yearbook of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute 78, 1928, pp. 161–219 online (PDF; 3.1 MB)
• A new turtle from the Italian Miocene . Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna 44, 1930, pp. 413–418 online (PDF; 614 kB)
• New teeth of great apes from the Miocene of the Vienna Basin . Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna 46, 1931, S- 15-27 online (PDF; 1.8 MB)
• Geological studies in the outer cliff zone . Yearbook of the Imperial and Royal Geological Institute 81, 1931, pp. 1–23 online (PDF; 1.0 MB)
• Augenstein gravel in the area of ​​the Semmering Limestone and the geological conditions of the find area . Negotiations of the Federal Geological Institute 1935, pp. 167–171 online (PDF; 407 kB)
• For knowledge of the Nama fossils of Southwest Africa . Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna 66, 1963, pp. 113–120 online (PDF; 3.2 MB)
• Principles of Micropalaeontology , Melbourne University Press / Oxford University Press 1945, New York, Hafner, 1963
• Parvancorina - an artheopod from the Late Precambrian (Ediacarian) of South Australia . Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna 83, 1980, pp. 83–90 online (PDF; 4.1 MB)
• The Dawn of Animal Life - a biohistorical study , Cambridge University Press 1984

literature

• BP Radakrishna (Editor) The world of Martin F. Glaessner , Memoirs Geological Society of India, Volume 20, Bangalore 1991

Web links

• Biography at the Australian Academy of Sciences