Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (born April 14, 1904 in Jakarta , Dutch East Indies ; † November 19, 1983 in Unterpirkach , Austria ) was a Dutch geologist who mainly dealt with structural geology , economic geology and volcanology and made fundamental contributions to the study of geology from Indonesia delivered.

Life

Rein van Bemmelen spent his youth in the Dutch East Indies, where his father Willem van Bemmelen (1868–1941) was director of the magnetic, meteorological and seismological observatory in Jakarta. Rein studied mining from 1920 to 1927 at the University of Delft in the Netherlands , among others with H. A. Brouwer and G. A. F. Molengraaff . He completed his doctorate in geology in 1927 with a thesis on the Betic Cordillera . He took courses in volcanology at the University of Naples and then worked as the head of the Volcanological Service of the Dutch East Indies, where he mapped parts of Java and Sumatra . From 1933 to 1935 he studied soil mechanics at the Technical University of Vienna and then returned to Java to carry out volcanological studies on magma and pyroclastic rocks , structural geology and tectonics . He was given the opportunity to observe the activity of Mount Merapi during the 1930s from the Babadan volcanological post on the northwest slope of the volcano.

During the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies in World War II , van Bemmelen, his wife Lucie and his son Nout spent three years in separate prisoner-of-war camps. He was one of the small group of experts whom the Japanese allowed to practice their profession. After the end of the war, the couple moved to The Hague and van Bemmelen was entrusted with the task of collecting all information on the geology of the Sunda Archipelago . He had already put this information down in a manuscript, which was initially lost. He had entrusted it to his assistant, who brought it to Yogyakarta . It was returned to him after diplomatic relations between the Netherlands and Indonesia were resumed. Van Bemmelen had rewritten it in the meantime, however, and published it shortly after Indonesia's independence in 1949 as a two-volume work in three parts under the title The Geology of Indonesia . He worked for a year as assistant to Stephanus Gerardus Trooster (1896–1950) at the University of Utrecht and from 1950 as a professor of economic geology at the University of Utrecht. At the same time he worked on a part-time basis at Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij as a consultant .

Van Bemmelen retired in 1969. After the death of his wife in 1983, he moved to Austria, where he died a short time later. After his death, a controversial television production appeared about his role in helping his wife die .

Act

Van Bemmelen has made a name for himself not only in the field of geology in Indonesia, but also in the field of geotectonics , especially in explaining the mechanisms of mountain formation . In his Mountain Building , inspired by Erich Haarmann's oscillation theory , he formulated his undation theory , according to which the mechanism for mountain-forming processes in the earth's mantle is to be sought. Due geochemical differentiation resulting density differences would lead to the rise of rock material in the shell, caused the formation of mountains. This idea was in contradiction to the theory of plate tectonics , which primarily sees horizontal mass displacement due to continental drift as the driving force behind mountain formation. In 1972, in his book Geodynamic Models , he tried to integrate the undation theory into plate tectonics, thus introducing new aspects into plate tectonics.

In addition to his pioneering work on the geology of Indonesia and geotectonic issues, van Bemmelen also conducted research in other areas. When he became professor at the University of Utrecht in 1950, he began with Martin Gerard Rutten (1910-1970) investigations into the volcanology and paleomagnetism of Iceland . He supervised seven doctoral theses on the tectonics of the Italian Alps and several hydrogeological dissertations. In total, he published four books and over 200 scientific articles.

Honors

In 1970 van Bemmelen received the Van Waterschoot van der Gracht medal from the Koninklijk Nederlands Geologischer en Mijnbouwkundig Genootschap (KNGMG). In 1977 he was awarded the Wollaston Medal of the Geological Society of London . On his 75th birthday, a special edition of the journal Geologie en Mijnbouw (Geologie en Mijnbouw, Volume 58, No. 2, 1979) was published under the title Fixism, mobilism and relativism, van Bemmelen's search for harmony with contributions from friends, former students and colleagues .

Works

• The Geology of Indonesia . 3 parts in 2 volumes. United States Government Printing Office , The Hague 1949.
• Mountain building: a study primarily based on Indonesia region of the world's most active crustal deformations . Nijhoff, The Hague 1954.
• Tablemountains of northern Iceland (and related geological notes) . Brill, Leiden 1955 (with MG Rutten).
• Geodynamic models. An evaluation and a synthesis . In: Developments in geotectonics . tape 2 . Elsevier Publishing Company, Amsterdam, New York 1972, ISBN 0-444-40967-X .

literature

• WJM van der Linden: in memoriam: Rein van Bemmelen . In: Geologie en Mijnbouw . Vol 63, No. 1 , 1984 ( online article ).
• Alexander Tollmann : Reinout Willem van Bemmelen, April 14, 1904 - November 19, 1983 . In: Communications of the Austrian Geological Society . tape 77 . Vienna 1984, p. 369–372 ( online article; PDF file; 343 kB ).
• P. Marks: Honderd jaar geologically onderzoek aan de Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht . In: 125 Jaar Geologische Onderzoek aan de Universiteit Utrecht . 2004 ( online article; PDF file; 1 MB ).

Web links

• Literature by and about Reinout Willem van Bemmelen in the catalog of the German National Library

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Alexander Tollmann : Reinout Willem van Bemmelen, April 14, 1904 - November 19, 1983 . In: Communications of the Austrian Geological Society . tape 77 . Vienna 1984, p. 369–372 ( online article; PDF file; 343 kB ).
2. ^ Van Waterschoot van der Gracht Penning . ( Memento from November 23, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Internet presence of the KNGMG
3. ↑ Wollaston Medal . The Geological Society of London , archived from the original on August 19, 2010 ; accessed on January 23, 2016 (English, original website no longer available).