Radim Kettner

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Radim Kettner

Radim Kettner , (born May 5, 1891 in Prague , † April 9, 1967 in Prague) was a Czechoslovak geologist and university professor . He was the director of the Geological and Paleontological Institute of Charles University in Prague . He is considered one of the most important Czechoslovak geologists in the 20th century.

Among other things, he dealt with the tectonics and stratigraphy of the Paleozoic of the Bohemian Masses , for example with Odolen Kodym he created a new stratigraphy of the Barrandian , with the stratigraphy of the Proterozoic Bohemia, with the Moravian Devonian , which he mapped, and the Kulm . He dealt with the Low Tatras and other parts of the Carpathian Mountains and founded the Carpathian Geological Society with Polish geologists.

Life

As a young geologist, Kettner took part in a memorandum that he signed with other specialist colleagues in January 1919. In it, the signatories called on the Czechoslovak government to found a Geological State Institute as the successor to the former and no longer competent Imperial and Royal Geological Institute of Vienna . After the establishment of the State Geological Institute of the Czechoslovak Republic , which was decreed in the same year, he took on tasks within the founding group to develop this institution. Since November 7th, 1920 he was an external employee of the state institution, but employed full-time at the Charles University. In the early professional years after 1918, Kettner was able to gain a wide range of experience through his involvement in several international research projects. At that time, this promoted his work on the coal deposits on the Upper Silesian border between Poland and the Czechoslovak Republic . Together with students, Kettner carried out detailed geological surveys between Bohumín , Trenčín and Žilina along a planned railway line between Moravia and the eastern parts of Slovakia. This section was intended as an efficient connection between Prague and Užhorod .

In the area of ​​Moravia, Kettner was particularly interested in the structural structure of the Moravian Devonian and the Moravian-Silesian Kulm . He investigated oil- bearing strata on Moravian and Slovak territory . The results of this field work were published in 1924 and 1925.

In 1926 he received from the responsible Ministry of Education ( Ministerstvo školství a národní osvěty ) a budget of up to 5000 crowns to carry out geological explorations in the Low Tatras . With this work, large areas of this region were geologically recorded, with a workload of eight to ten years. As a result of these activities, two maps published in 1931 on a scale of 1: 50,000 of the northern part of the Low Tatras were created, for which he is the sole author. His assignment included the exploration of water resources, closed quarries and new deposits of mineral raw materials. In 1927 he published a geological profile of the Low Tatras. His work on the Slovak territory lasted from 1924 to 1938.

In his life, Kettner mapped other regions, mainly from the Bohemian Massif in Central Bohemia and in the Barrandium, and thus contributed significantly to the complete re-mapping of the country after the withdrawal of the Imperial Geological Institute .

His extensive work on Slovak territory and the impressions of his North American cruise following the International Geological Congress of 1933 inspired him to conduct speleological investigations in the Moravian Karst and the Low Tatras. He was particularly influenced by his impressions gained in the American national parks. He then became an active member of the Club of Czechoslovak Tourists ( Klub československých turistů ). After the first tourist development work for the Demänová stalactite cave , his work in this area deepened. His most important speleological field of activity was the Domica stalactite cave, discovered in 1926 . For this natural object, Kettner organized interdisciplinary exploration work with the help of a scientific commission consisting of J. Kunský (geomorphologist), JV Kašpar (mineralogist), J. Kobliha (paleontologist), J. Böhm (archaeologist) and Č. Vorel (hydrologist) and other people. Based on the model of the Yellowstone National Park, he founded a museum for the Domica Cave System and the Slovak Karst ( Muzeum Slovenského krasu při Domici, jeskyni Klubu čs. Turistů ). For the purpose of better public education, after 1938 he developed a concept for popularizing geoscientific issues relating to the Moravian Karst and the Prachovské Skály .

His textbook Všeobecná geologie (German: "General Geology") was published between 1941 and 1948 in three volumes in the first edition and 1952 to 1955 in four volumes in the second edition. Volumes 1 and 2 of the first edition were published in 1941 and 1943 by the Prague publishing house Melantrich and served as a textbook for prospective Czechoslovak geologists and already trained specialists who were denied an official university education between 1939 and 1945 due to the Germanization policy of the Protectorate authorities . The volume, published in 1943, was out of print within four months. For Kettner, these activities meant risky living conditions as part of the “Final Solution to the Czech Question” planned by the National Socialists .

After the closure of the Czech higher education institutions on November 17, 1939, Kettner, who also held a professorship at Charles University, received a pension . During the Second World War , the German geologist Adalbert Liebus († 1945), an external member of the State Geological Institute of the ČSR , secured the collections and the library from Kettner's former institute at the Czech Technical University in Prague .

His textbook was translated into German and published as a four-volume edition 1958–1960 in the Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften in Berlin. Kettner saw the importance of the German-language edition in the fact that the findings of Czechoslovak research find their way into "world literature (...)". In the foreword to the German edition, he comments on its main purpose, which he saw in the "further intensification of the close cooperation between German and Czechoslovak geologists" and in the "mutual recognition of the nature of their work and their thinking". Kettner wrote numerous works in German or had them translated.

In 1952 he became a member of the Czech Academy of Sciences . In 1965 he received the Leopold von Buch badge . A street in Prague is named after him and the mineral kettnerite . In 1942 Kettner received the Metelka Prize from the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts and in 1949 the State Prize for Science from the Ministry of Education, Science and the Arts. He was an honorary member of the Polish Geological Society, a member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and the Cracow Academy of Sciences.

He was married to the daughter Marie Remešová (1900–1933) of the Olomouc doctor and paleontologist Mořic Remeš. She fell from a rock in the High Tatras while he was attending the 26th International Geological Congress in Washington DC .

Fonts

  • General geology , 4 volumes, Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin, 1958, 1959, 1961
  • Radim Kettner: Jeskyňářství v KČST (caving in KČST). In: Sborník KČST 1938 [1] (Czech; PDF; 138 kB)

literature

  • Josef Haubelt Geolog Radim Kettner , Praha, Český geologický ústav (Geological Institute Prague) 1991.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Osobnosti Moravy, entry by Radim Kettner (Czech)
  2. ↑ For example about the eruption sequence and the mountain-forming phases in a part of the south-eastern wing of the Barrandiens. A contribution to the knowledge of the Variscan mountain formation in Central Bohemia , yearbook kk geolog. Reichsanstalt, Volume 67, 1917, Issue 2, pp. 98–129 Online (PDF; 2.4 MB)
  3. ↑ Attempt at a stratigraphic classification of the Bohemian Algonkium , Geologische Rundschau 1917, About some problems of the Bohemian Algonkium , Freiberger Forschungen C, No. 17, 1955
  4. ↑ Josef Haubelt, 1991. p. 44
  5. ↑ Josef Haubelt, 1991. pp. 44, 101
  6. ^ Josef Svoboda: Ústřední ústav geologický ČSSR 1919-1969 . Praha (Geofond, Academii) 1969, pp. 11-12, 89-90
  7. ^ Josef Svoboda: Ústřední ústav geologický ČSSR 1919-1969 . Praha (Geofond, Academii) 1969, p. 117
  8. ↑ Josef Haubelt, 1991. pp. 61–62, 102
  9. ↑ Cesta k dedičstvu . on www.unesco.eu.sk ( Memento of the original from January 16, 2013 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. (Slovak) @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.unesco.eu.sk
  10. ↑ Kettner: Allgemeine Geologie , 1958, Vol. 1, P. VII
  11. ↑ Kettner: Allgemeine Geologie , 1959, Vol. 3, P. VIII
  12. ↑ Josef Haubelt, 1991. pp. 66, 102-103
  13. ↑ Kettner. General geology . Berlin 1958–1960. Quote 1960, Vol. 4, p. X
  14. ↑ Kettner: Allgemeine Geologie , 1958, Vol. 1, p. X
  15. ↑ Kettnerite
  16. ↑ Entry MUDr. a RNDr. hc Mořic Remeš on www.rejstrik.cz
personal data
SURNAME Kettner, Radim
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech geologist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1891
PLACE OF BIRTH Prague
DATE OF DEATH April 9, 1967
Place of death Prague