Rudolf Balks

Rudolf Balks (born May 12, 1901 in Meyerich near Soest; † November 17, 1971 in Münster ) was a German agricultural chemist .

Life

Balks studied chemistry at the Westphalian Wilhelms University in Münster from 1920 and received his doctorate there in 1925 with a dissertation on the formation and decomposition of humus in the soil. Until 1935 he worked as a research assistant at the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute in Münster . In 1935 he completed his habilitation in Münster with a study on the importance of iodine in soils and plants.

From 1936 to 1950, Balks was head of the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute in Braunschweig (after 1945 Ebstorf / Uelzen). At the same time he had a teaching position at the Technical University of Braunschweig until 1945 . As an honorary professor, he gave lectures there on the nutrition of agricultural crops and methods of soil analysis. From 1950 to 1966 he was director of the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute in Münster. The focus of his research activities were studies on the role of trace elements in the nutrition of cultivated plants.

Fonts

• Studies on the formation and decomposition of humus in the soil. (= Dissertation University of Münster) 1925.
• Investigations on the iodine question in Westphalia. (= Habilitation thesis University of Münster 1935). In: Agricultural yearbooks. Volume 81, 1935, pp. 939-1001.

literature

• 100 years of the Agricultural Investigation and Research Institute in Münster. Joseph König Institute Münster (Westphalia) 1871–1971. Münster 1971 (with a list of his publications).

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Balks in the catalog of the German National Library