Rudolf Geiger (climatologist)

Rudolf Oskar Robert Williams Geiger (born August 24, 1894 in Erlangen , † January 22, 1981 in Munich ) was a German meteorologist . He is one of the leading pioneers in microclimatology .

Life path

Rudolf Geiger comes from a family of scholars; his father was the Indologist Wilhelm Geiger , his brother the physicist Hans Geiger . He attended a humanistic grammar school in Erlangen and studied mathematics at the universities of Erlangen and Kiel since 1912, with interruptions due to military service . In 1920 he obtained his doctorate in Erlangen with the dissertation “ Indian Geodesy in Antiquity and the Middle Ages ”.

After completing his doctorate, Geiger got a job as an assistant at the Physics Institute of the Technical University of Darmstadt . Here he found his way to meteorology . From 1923 he worked as a research assistant at the Meteorological Department of the Munich Forest Research Institute, which was part of the Bavarian State Weather Service. In 1927 he completed his habilitation at the University of Munich with a paper on the climate of the air layer close to the ground. From 1937 to 1945 he was director of the Meteorological-Physical Institute at the Forestry University of Eberswalde . During the Second World War he was temporarily employed as a teacher for marine meteorologists. In 1948 he took over the management of the university's meteorological institutes and the forest research institute in Munich as a full professor . In 1958 he retired, but even after that he continued to work scientifically.

Research services

Geiger has been collecting extensive measurement data since 1923 through systematic experiments in Bavarian forests, above all on the temperature conditions in air layers close to the ground, on the changes in the existing climate depending on the exposure and on the influence of the ground vegetation on the site climate. With these long-term forestry-climatic site investigations was he one of the most influential pioneers of micro- climatology .

Geiger summarized the first results of his field studies in his habilitation thesis in 1927 . It was published in the same year as a book under the title “ The climate of the air layer close to the ground ” and after a few years belonged to the international standard works of climatology. The book, which is also exemplary in didactic terms, offers a high level of descriptive information and is considered Geiger's main scientific work. Geiger continued working on this textbook on microclimatology for several decades and published fundamentally revised new editions in 1942, 1950 and 1961. There are also translations in English, Spanish and Russian. In the second half of the 20th century, microclimatology gained increasing importance in connection with questions of environmental protection .

Geiger has published numerous articles on the microclimate and on basic questions of climate science in meteorological journals and handbooks. He was also interested in world climatology. Together with Wladimir Peter Köppen , between 1930 and 1943 he published a five-volume “ Handbuch der Klimatologie ” and wall maps on the world's climates . After his retirement he created twelve new school wall maps for climate science.

honors and awards

• 1937 Secretary of the Commission for Agrometeorology of the International Meteorological Organization
• 1952 full member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (1958–1959 Vice President)
• 1955 member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
• 1959 Bavarian Order of Merit
• 1964 honorary member of the Japanese Meteorological Society
• 1964 honorary member of the Meteorological Society in Munich
• 1964 commemorative publication of his students for his 70th birthday
• 1966 honorary member of the Association of German Meteorological Societies
• 1968 Honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Natural Sciences at the University of Hohenheim
• 1977 Peter Lenné Gold Medal from the Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Foundation in Basel

Major works

• The climate of the air layer close to the ground . Verlag F. Vieweg & Sohn Braunschweig 1927 = Die Wissenschaft Vol. 78; 2nd edition ibid. 1942; from 3rd edition title with the addition Handbuch der Mikroklimatologie ibid. 1950; 4th edition, ibid. 1961. - Further editions in English, Spanish and Russian. 5th ed., The Climate near the Ground, edited by Robert H. Aron and Paul Todhunter. Publishing house F. Vieweg & Sohn Braunschweig 1995.
• Manual of climatology in five volumes . Edited by W. Koeppen and R. Geiger (5 volumes, 19 parts). Verlag Gebrüder Borntraeger Berlin 1930–1943.

literature

• Prof. Dr. Rudolf Geiger on his 70th birthday . Festschrift published by his students. University of Munich - Meteorological Institute. Scientific Communications No. 9, 1964 (with picture).
• A. Baumgartner: Obituary - Prof. Dr. Dr. hc Rudolf Geiger . In: Mitteilungen der Deutschen Meteorologische Gesellschaft vol. 33, 1981, no. 1, pp. 21–24.

Web links

• Literature by and about Rudolf Geiger in the catalog of the German National Library
• World Map of the Köppen-Geiger climate classification updated (VU Wien)