Richard Thun

Richard Thun (born February 1, 1899 in Wapelfeld ( Schleswig-Holstein ), † in April 1945 near Danzig ) was a German agricultural chemist . He taught at the University of Rostock and at the Technical University of Danzig . His research interests focused primarily on the investigation methodology of agriculturally used soils .

Life

Richard Thun studied chemistry at the University of Kiel , where he was in 1924 with a dissertation on response patterns of Aethylenmonobromacetat Dr. phil. PhD. He then worked as a scientific assistant at the Agricultural Research Station in Rostock . In 1937 he completed his habilitation at the University of Rostock with the thesis The value of soil investigation, in particular the planned nutrient control by the germination method for the field of agricultural chemistry. After four years as a lecturer in Rostock, he worked from 1941 as a private lecturer in agricultural chemistry and soil science at the Technical University of Danzig . At the same time he was director of the Agricultural Investigation Office of the Gdansk-West Prussia State Farmers in Gdansk from 1941.

The main research field of Thun was the improvement and standardization of investigation methods for agricultural soils. One of his practice-oriented publications is to be emphasized in the text The soil investigation in agricultural holdings , published in 1939 in the series of works by the Reichsnährstand .

Thun's main scientific work is the book The Investigation of Soils, published in 1941 . This standard methodological work was revised after the Second World War and was included as the first volume in the multi-volume "Handbuch der Landwirtschaftlichen Prüfmethodik" published by the Association of German Agricultural Investigations and Research Institutes : The second edition appeared in 1949 and the third in 1955. Until the mid-1960s, the agricultural inspection offices in the Federal Republic of Germany largely followed the inspection methods described in this book.

Fonts

• On the action of ethylene monobromoacetate on bases (a new reaction of aniline) . Diss. Phil. Univ. Kiel 1924. Typescript.
• The value of soil research, especially the scheduled nutrient control by the seedling method . Habil.-Schr., Phil. Fac., Univ. Rostock. - Zugl. in: Soil Science and Plant Nutrition Vol. 3 (48), 1937, pp. 1-55.
• The soil investigation in farms. A guide for practitioners and business consultants . Reichsnährstand Verlags-GmbH, Berlin 1939 = Work of the Reichsnährstand, Vol. 58.
• The study of soils . Neumann-Verlag, Neudamm and Berlin 1941. - New editions as first volume in the manual of agricultural testing and investigation methodology (method book) ; 2nd edition revised by Rudolf Herrmann, ibid. 1949; 3rd edition revised by Erick Knickmann, ibid. 1955.

literature

• Contributions and documents on the history of the Gdansk Technical University 1904–1945 . Published by the Society of Friends of the Gdansk University of Technology on the 75th anniversary of its foundation. Hanover 1979, p. 163.

Web links

• Literature by and about Richard Thun in the catalog of the German National Library
• Entry on Richard Thun in the Catalogus Professorum Rostochiensium