Peter Polis

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Peter Polis (born November 22, 1869 in Aachen ; † November 2, 1929 there ) was a German meteorologist and long-time director of the Meteorological Observatory in Aachen .

Live and act

Meteorological Observatory Aachen, service building in the city ​​garden of Aachen by Peter Polis

After finishing school, the son of the Aachen cloth manufacturer Jean Polis studied meteorology from 1889 to 1891 at the universities of Freiburg im Breisgau and Bonn. In Freiburg he also met his wife Frida Zahn, with whom he later had four daughters. After his exams, his father temporarily employed him in his factory before Polis was taken over as head of the meteorological station in Aachen in 1894, which received the status of a meteorological observatory from 1895. In this function he was also editor of the " German Meteorological Yearbooks " for the Aachen area from 1895 to 1915 . Before 1898, Polis moved to the University of Basel , where he completed his doctorate in 1898. He then followed a call to RWTH Aachen University , where he initially qualified as a professor and was then taken on as a private lecturer. A year later he was appointed director of the Aachen meteorological observatory. In April 1901, at the invitation of Georg Gerland , Polis was part of the German delegation for the First International Conference on Seismology in Strasbourg , at which the " International Seismological Society ", today's International Association of Seismology and Physics of the Earth's Interior, was founded two years later , as well as the construction of a main earthquake research station in Strasbourg. In addition, from 1906, Polis was given the management of the city of Aachen's public weather service.

In those years he intensively researched the weather conditions for seafaring, especially for the trans-Atlantic routes to America, as well as for airships , where he gained the trust of military airships as a pioneer in aviation-related meteorology . On several business trips to the office for weather services in the " Department of Agriculture " of the American government in Washington, DC , which were also research trips for him, Polis was instrumental in a joint cooperation to set up wireless telegraphic weather forecasts with the help of selected merchant or mail ships and thus for multiple daily and fast weather forecasts. He underpinned this during his various crossings with numerous test runs in which up to nine ships were involved, as well as detailed research reports on the current sea weather conditions. From this idea, the stationary weather ships operated by the countries bordering the oceans emerged , which also served as medical emergency stations and operational platforms for rescue aircraft and have in turn been replaced by satellite observation today. With its German-American negotiations, Polis was already one step further on an international level than the Deutsche Seewarte , which was primarily responsible for the North and Baltic Seas and the European Arctic Ocean.

In addition, Polis was one of the co-initiators who brought together the scientific and technical research in the field of aircraft construction at the Technical University, the corresponding public interest and the necessary coordination of a planned long-haul flight to Berlin, which resulted in the founding of the Aachen Association on March 12, 1911 came for airship travel. Four scientific associations, the Aachen district association in the Association of German Engineers , the Society for Geography and Weathering , the Natural Science Association of Aachen and the Electrotechnical Association as well as 76 private individuals, including Professors Junkers , Reissner , Hertwig , Frentzen , Wallichs , Rötscher , the aviation pioneer Erich Lochner , the incumbent Lord Mayor Veltmann, representatives of the authorities, city councilors, officers and even eight wives, including the ladies Lochner, Polis, Rötscher, Reissner and Delius, were among the signatories of the founding deed. More than 170 members joined the association and Peter Polis was elected to the first association board.

After a long break due to the First World War and interim lectureship at the Agricultural University of Bonn-Poppelsdorf , Polis was reappointed to RWTH Aachen University in 1922, now as an associate professor. In the same year, on September 19, 1922, Polis in Leipzig was one of the founding members of the German Seismological Society , today's German Geophysical Society, which came into being at the suggestion of Emil Wiechert . Only seven years later, Polis died at the age of almost sixty and was buried in Aachen's Ostfriedhof .

Works (selection)

  • About scientific balloon flights and their interpretation for the physics of the atmosphere ; 1896
  • The air currents in the barometric minima and maxima: a contribution to the theory of cyclones and anticyclones , Basel, Univ. Diss. 1899
  • On the climatology of Aachen: results of the meteorological observations made in the years 1829 - 1989 compiled ; 28 tab., - Aachen: Barth, 1890
  • Cloud tables  : sixteen pictures in collotype , - Karlsruhe: Braun, 1899
  • Precipitation conditions in the central Rhine province and neighboring areas , Stuttgart: Engelhorn, 1899
  • Weather studies; Instructions for assessing and predicting the weather ; 1900
  • The weather service and meteorology in the United States of America and Canada , Berlin: Parey, 1908
  • The method of pilot balloon measurement for aerology and airship travel , City of Aachen Archives, 1910
  • Explanatory text for the precipitation map of the Rhine river area . Publication of the Meteorological Observatory Aachen, Leipzig, Wagner & Debes, 1928.
  • German Meteorological Yearbook for Aachen ; Years I to XXI (1896–1915); 19 booklets; Publishing house g. Braun, Karlsruhe

Literature and Sources

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Polis, Peter
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Polis, Peter Hermann Johann
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German meteorologist and director of the Aachen meteorological observatory
DATE OF BIRTH November 22, 1869
PLACE OF BIRTH Aachen
DATE OF DEATH November 2, 1929
Place of death Aachen