Ragnar Hult

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Ragnar Hult in the early 1880s.

Ragnar Hult (born March 4, 1857 in Fiskars , Finland , † September 25, 1899 in Helsinki ) was a Finnish vegetation expert, geographer and university professor.

Life

After completing his studies, Hult became Professor of Vegetation Science and Geography at the University of Helsinki .

He was one of the pioneers of modern plant sociology , whereby he primarily attached importance to the physiognomy of a plant population in his methodical approach. His ideas found supporters especially in Scandinavia and so he is also referred to as the " father of the Uppsala school " in vegetation science.

Together with Rutger Sernander, Ragnar Hult has presented an estimation scale for the uptake of plant communities, which was the only one to find significance in vegetation research alongside the abundance dominance scale according to Braun-Blanquet . The so-called Hult-Sernander scale , which is a dominance scale , is still used mainly in Northern Europe.

In 1881, Hult published a comprehensive study on succession in a certain area and was able to show that this begins with a comparatively large number of different pioneering societies, only to lead to a small number of plant communities in the later stable phase.

As a geographer, he published several maps and textbooks on geography and received a grant in 1898 for a geographic-geological exploration trip to Spain and Central America. As a result of an illness, he returned from Spain to Finland in 1899, where he died in the same year.

Aimo Kaarlo Cajander was one of Hult's students , who further developed Hult's vegetation methods, especially for the description and classification of Nordic forest communities.

Selected Works

  • (1881): Försök bis analytisk treatment af växtformationerna ( attempt at an analytical treatment of plant communities ). Meddelanden af ​​Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica , 8: 1–155. Dissertation: University of Helsinki .
  • (1883): Finlands gräns mot Norge mellan Enare och Varangerfjord. Helsinfors: Dagblads tryckeri.
  • (1894): Grunddragen af ​​den allmänna geografin. Vol. 1: Matematisk geografi och climatografi. 215 p. Helsingfors: Weilin & Göös.
  • (1896): Finlands geografi i korthet framställd. 112 S. Helsingfors: Söderström.
  • (1898): Geografiska iakttagelser. Några anvisningar for excellent and amatörer. Geografiska Foreningens Tidskrift 10, pp. 182–303.

literature

  • Rikkinen, Kalevi: Ragnar Hult and the emergence of geography in Finland, 1880-1900, pp. 3-192. Fennia 166: 1. Helsinki: Geographical Society of Finland, 1988. ISSN  0015-0010 .

Web link

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ H. Trass, N. Malmer: Northern European approaches to classification . In: RH Whittaker (Ed.): Classification of Plant Societies . Dr. W. Junk publ., The Hague 1978, pages 201-245
  2. ↑ Henry Chandler Cowles : The Causes of Vegetation Cycles . In: Annals of the Association of American Geographs , 1 (1) (1911), pp. 3-20 doi: 10.2307 / 2560843
personal data
SURNAME Hult, Ragnar
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Finnish vegetation expert and geographer
DATE OF BIRTH March 4, 1857
PLACE OF BIRTH Fiskars , Uusimaa
DATE OF DEATH September 25, 1899
Place of death Helsingfors