Paul Woldstedt

Paul Woldstedt (born October 14, 1888 in Flensburg , † July 7, 1973 in Bonn ) was a German geologist who was considered the nestor of German Quaternary research , especially for the Ice Age.

Life

Woldstedt studied geology at the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg and at the University of Göttingen , where he received his doctorate in 1912 with contributions to the morphology of North Schleswig . He then worked for a short time as an assistant at the University of Halle (Geographical Institute) and from 1921 at the Prussian Geological State Institute , where he initially mapped especially in the Braunschweig region. He became internationally known in 1929 through the book The Ice Age . After the Second World War he was head of department in the Lower Saxony State Office for Soil Research in Hanover. In 1951 he retired and moved from Hanover to Bonn. Since 1952 he was honorary professor at the University of Bonn .

Woldstedt limited his investigations of the Ice Age not only to Germany or Europe, but also examined, for example, the effects of the Ice Age (sea level based on fossil marine beaches) in Australia and New Zealand, in South Africa (on a six-month study trip in the 1960s that also took him led to Australia / New Zealand) and North America (research trips 1928, 1959). In 1936 he studied current glacial and periglacial processes (such as dead ice formation) in Iceland.

His book The Ice Age has long been a standard work.

He had been a member of the Leopoldina since 1946 and founder of the German Quaternary Association (DEUQUA) in Hanover in 1947 (with Rudolf Grahmann , Konrad Richter ). The first conference was in Hanover in October 1948 and their magazine Eiszeitalter und Gegenwart was founded in 1951, primarily on Woldstedt's initiative. In 1948 he received the Hans Stille Medal from their foundation and in 1958 the Albrecht Penck Medal from DEUQUA. The Paul Woldstedt Prize for dissertations from the German Quaternary Association is named after him.

A boulder found in 1981, 4.2 × 1.7 × 1.6 m in size and weighing 20 tons, at Steinhuder Meer is named after him (Paul-Woldstedt-Stein in Mardorf (Neustadt am Rübenberge) ). It is a gneiss granite from Sweden that is over a billion years old and reached this terminal moraine layer in the Drenthe stage of the Saale Ice Age. Woldstedt had introduced the Rehburg stage of the Saale Ice Age when investigating the terminal moraine lines in the vicinity .

Woldstedt had good international contacts. From 1961 to 1967 he was the commission for the International Quaternary Map of Europe of the INQUA ( International Union for Quaternary Research ) (scale 1: 2.5 million), after being a member of the commission for the International Quaternary Map of Europe (scale 1: 1 , 5 million) was. School maps were also created from his geological-morphological overview map of the north German icing area (scale 1: 1.5 million) from 1935.

Honors

• 1946: Elected member of the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina
• 1953: Cross of Merit (Steckkreuz) of the Federal Republic of Germany

Fonts

• The Ice Age: Basics of a Geology of the Diluvium , Stuttgart, Enke, 1929
• The Ice Age: Basics of a Geology of the Quaternary , 3 volumes, 3rd edition, Stuttgart, Enke, 1954 (Volume 1), 1958 (Volume 2), 1965 (Volume 3)
• Quaternary , in the series Handbuch der Stratigraphischen Geologie , Stuttgart, Enke, 1969
• with Klaus Duphorn: Northern Germany and adjacent areas in the Ice Age , 3rd edition, Stuttgart, KF Koehler, 1974 (first von Woldstedt 1950, 2nd edition 1952, he died a year before the 3rd edition was completed, which was completed by Duphorn)
• The History of the River Network in Northern Germany and Adjacent Areas , Ice Age and Present, Volume 7, 1956, No. 1
• The Course of the Ice Age , Ice Age and the Present, Volume 16, 1966
• Saale Ice Age , Wartha Stage and Vistula Ice Age in Northern Germany , Ice Age and Present, Volume 4/5, No. 1, 1954

literature

• Obituary by Duphorn in Geological Yearbook, Volume 25, 1974, pp. 3–12 (with list of publications)

Web links

• Literature by and about Paul Woldstedt in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ For example Ernst Probst Germany in the Ice Age , 2010
2. ↑ Woldstedt The glaciation of New Zealand and the question of its simultaneity with the European glaciations ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Interglacial marine beaches in Australia ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , (Report of a trip to study the Pleistocene in the southern hemisphere 1,2), Ice Age and Present, Volume 12, No. 1, 1962, ISSN  0424-7116 , doi : 10.3285 / eg.12.1.03 and doi : 10.3285 / eg .12.1.06 , pp. 25-42 and pp. 60-65
3. ↑ Woldstedt The Last Ice Age in North America and Europe ( Memento of the original from April 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ice Age and Present, Volume 11, 1960, ISSN  0424-7116 , doi : 10.3285 / eg.11.1.15 , pp. 148-165
4. ↑ See the article German Quaternary Association for the award winners
5. ↑ Ernst-Rüdiger Look, Klaus-Dieter Meyer The Paul-Woldstedt-Stein - a boulder on the Rehburg terminal moraine on the Steinhuder Meer ( Memento of the original from April 9, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked . Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Ice Age and Present, Volume 38, 1988, ISSN  0424-7116 , doi : 10.3285 / eg.38.1.01 , pp. 1-5. With biography of Woldstedt.
6. ^ Woldstedt on an important terminal moraine in northwest Germany , Jber. Nieders. geolog. Ver., Volume 21, 1928, p. 10
7. ↑ Member entry of Paul Woldstedt at the German Academy of Natural Scientists Leopoldina , accessed on November 30, 2015.