Victor Moritz Goldschmidt

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Victor Moritz Goldschmidt (born January 27, 1888 in Zurich ; † March 20, 1947 in Vestre Aker near Oslo ) was an important geochemist .

Life

The young Victor Goldschmidt

Goldschmidt's father Heinrich Jacob Goldschmidt (1857–1937) received a professorship for chemistry in Oslo, so the family moved there from Zurich. In 1905 Goldschmidt began studying mineralogy, geology and chemistry at the University of Oslo, his teacher was the old master of geology and mineralogy of Norway , Waldemar Christofer Brøgger . From 1907 he made petrographic work on contact metamorphosis in the Oslo area. His resulting dissertation was published in 1911 and is one of his major works. In 1914, at the age of only 26, he became professor and director at the Mineralogical Institute at Christiania University (today: University of Oslo ).

Here he turned to research into the laws governing the distribution of chemical elements in the earth's body. He published the results in a series of articles entitled Geochemical Distribution Laws of the Elements (1923-27). He recognized that the laws of crystal chemistry play an important role. Elements with a similar ionic radius can represent each other in crystals and form common minerals, see Goldschmidt's rule . He was able to determine many atomic and ionic radii from X-ray diffraction images . In doing so, he created an important basis for crystal chemistry .

An appointment to the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich failed in 1924 after an anti-Semitically motivated defeat by his proponents Willstätter , Paul Heinrich von Groth and others. a. in the philosophy faculty. The resulting scandal led Willstätter to retire prematurely and Goldschmidt's proponent Rudolf Nissen, according to his own admission, became aware of the dangerous potency of academic anti-Semitism. In 1926 he was elected a member of the Leopoldina . Since 1924 he was a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and since 1929 a member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences .

After further offers from European universities, he accepted the call to Göttingen in 1929 . Here he examined in extensive series of analyzes the occurrence of the elements including the rare trace elements in terrestrial rocks and meteorites . He was under international protest racial laws of the Nazis to leave Germany forced. He returned to Oslo during an emigration from 1936 to 1941 , but had to flee from the Nazis again under adventurous circumstances. His escape took him via Sweden to Great Britain , where he worked in Aberdeen . In 1947, at the age of only 59, he died of complications from a leg operation in Oslo. The Bergkessel Goldschmidt Cirque in the East Antarctic Coatsland has borne his name since 1972 .

plant

Goldschmidt researched the laws that determine the distribution of elements in the earth's body. The Goldschmidt diagram named after him shows the frequency of chemical elements on earth as a function of their relative atomic mass . Goldschmidt coined the term "silicate shell" for the rock mantle. Victor Moritz Goldschmidt is considered to be the founder of modern geochemistry and crystal chemistry , along with the Russian Vladimir Wernadski .

The first compilation of the extrapolated element abundances in the cosmos emerged from his systematic investigations into the element abundances in meteorites .

The German Mineralogical Society awards the Victor Moritz Goldschmidt Prize annually to promote young scientists . A number of international geochemical societies, including the Geochemical Society , the Mineralogical Society of America, and the European Association of Geochemistry , jointly host an annual conference named after Goldschmidt; on it, the Geochemical Society also bestows its highest honor, the VM Goldschmidt Award for outstanding achievements in the field of geochemistry.

See also

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Life data, publications and academic family tree of Victor Moritz Goldschmidt at academictree.org, accessed on February 7, 2018.
  2. ^ Foreign members of the Russian Academy of Sciences since 1724. Victor Moritz Goldschmidt. Russian Academy of Sciences, accessed August 20, 2015 .
  3. ↑ Holger Krahnke: The members of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen 1751-2001 (= Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Philological-Historical Class. Volume 3, Vol. 246 = Treatises of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen, Mathematical-Physical Class. Episode 3, vol. 50). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2001, ISBN 3-525-82516-1 , p. 94.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Goldschmidt, Victor Moritz
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Geochemist
DATE OF BIRTH January 27, 1888
PLACE OF BIRTH Zurich
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1947
Place of death Vestre Aker near Oslo