Werner Käß

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Werner Käß, 2016
Werner Käß and District Administrator Dorothea Störr-Ritter at the awarding of the Staufer Medal

Werner Käß (born June 6, 1924 in Stuttgart - Cannstatt ) is a German geologist .

Life

After military service on the Eastern Front, imprisonment and high school graduation, Werner Käß began studying geology at the University of Stuttgart in 1946 , which he completed in 1954 with a dissertation . In the course of his professional life Werner Käß specialized in the field of hydrogeology and especially in the field of geohydrological marking technology , also known as tracer technology .

After graduating as Dr. rer. nat. Werner Käß began his professional life in 1954 with a job at the Brigitta oil drilling and extraction company in Lower Saxony . In 1957 he moved to the Geological State Office of Baden-Württemberg , based in Freiburg im Breisgau . His job there was to set up the geochemical laboratory and to fill the " Geochemistry " department. Gradually, his area of ​​responsibility shifted more and more in the direction of hydrogeology, and here especially the "groundwater quality" with the focus on pollutants in the groundwater , marking technology and redox potential measurements .

Hydrogeology, which the young Werner Käß turned to, is a young scientific discipline. At the time Werner Käß started his career, it was still in its infancy. Due to serious pollution problems in the water supply , the geological offices began to be interested in the flow of groundwater and thus in the spread of pollution in the 1950s. It was only from this time that the scientific methods for quantifying and evaluating hydrogeological facts were developed in both theoretical and experimental fields.

An essential tool for the investigation and for the qualitative as well as quantitative evaluation of groundwater flow systems are marking experiments using tracer techniques . At the beginning of Werner Käß's professional life, these techniques only existed to a limited extent, and Werner Käß was part of a small group that was now building up these techniques. Werner Käß has his own analysis laboratory in his private house and set up his own measuring field a few kilometers from his home in Umkirch near Merdingen , with which he was able to consistently and scientifically test the hydrogeological questions that came from various sides. Since the beginnings of modern hydrogeology, over six decades, he has done pioneering work in marking technology and thus became one of the fathers of modern marking hydrology, or in English, tracer hydrology. The most important scientific work of Werner Käß was in the following areas: introduction of fluorimetry as an analytical measuring technique , use of uranine and other fluorescent substances as tracers (marking substances ), use of fluorescent colored spores or microspheres.

The development of methods for analyzing groundwater flow systems was only the necessary first step. In order to describe the groundwater flow systems, they often had to be explored in tedious and lengthy detailed work. Werner Käß has made a great contribution to groundwater protection, especially in Baden-Württemberg , with his extensive groundwater analyzes to characterize drinking water resources and to describe the spread of pollutants in aquifers .

In addition to his experimental and research projects, Werner Käß has been teaching at the University of Freiburg since 1968 . In recognition of this, Werner Käß received his habilitation from the University of Freiburg in 1988 and was appointed associate professor in 1995.

After his official retirement, Werner Käß used the time freed up for further intensive scientific work. In 1992 Werner Käß published the textbook Geohydrological Marking Technology as part of a series of textbooks on hydrogeology . There were 13 co-authors for this book, but he wrote most of the book himself. This book was the first book that summarized the current state of knowledge of geohydrological marking technology in a single work. A comparable, comprehensive description of geohydrological marking technology did not exist until then, not even internationally. Up until then there were only articles in a wide variety of scientific publications. The book was further revised by Werner Käß, the revised version was translated into English in 1998, and it became an international standard work on marking technology under the title Tracing Technique in Geohydrology . Another revised version of the book was published in 2004 as a second German edition.

Werner Käß's achievements in the field of thermal and mineral water are less well known internationally, but in Germany he is an authority with several honors in these fields too. In order to give the German medicinal water landscape a better scientific framework, Werner Käß published the second German edition of the German Baths Book as the second major work of his retirement . After the first edition of the book from 1907 had only historical value for a long time, and a new edition was pending for a long time, Werner Käß set to work as early as the 1990s to present all recognized German spas from the point of view of water technology. It turned out to be a lot of work. In addition to the pure water analyzes , the geological profile sections of the pools and the groundwater courses were also dealt with. Despite the collaboration of over 80 co-authors, Werner Käß wrote a large part of the book himself. In 2008, together with the Association for Bath and Air Conditioning and his wife Hanna Käß as co-author, without their collaboration, he could not do the work would have been possible to bring out the new German bath book .

When asked what advice he could give the younger generation of hydrogeologists, Werner Käß replied: "You have to love science and be honest." And then further: " Water is a very important element. You have to see it as a gift from Heaven, a treasure to be kept clean and treasured. As the head of a laboratory , I received thousands of water samples. For me it was each sample is an individual case, not just a number. Sometimes I got on colleagues' nerves. Some wanted to know the hardness of a water sample, nothing else. For me as a scientist, that is not enough. I always analyze my water samples on the basis of clear methodological considerations . The same is true, in a broader sense, of a hydrogeologist. He has to understand his work in such a way that every problem is different and requires an individual solution. There is no simple recipe. "

Publications

Werner Käß's decades of scientific work are also reflected in the number of publications. Werner Käß wrote 86 publications as the sole author and 58 publications with co-authors. As a rule, these were publications in specialist journals or articles in specialist books. In 1972 Werner Käß wrote the book on oil infiltration " Heating oil infiltration tests in the Upper Rhine Plain ".

His two most important and most extensive publications came into being after leaving the Geological State Office of Baden-Württemberg at half age. These are the textbook on geohydrological marking technology , which is now an international reference work (1992) and the German swimming pool book (2008). The next book by Werner Käß, the book about "The Danube - Aach system. The infiltration of the Upper Danube between Immendingen and Fridingen ." was still preparing to print at the publisher in 2016.

  • Concretionary phosphate enrichments in southwest Germany . Dissertation University of Stuttgart 1954.
  • with Joachim Bartz: Heating oil seepage tests in the Upper Rhine Plain (= treatises of the Geological State Office Baden-Württemberg, issue 7). Herder, Freiburg 1972.
  • Hydrological marking technology (= textbook of hydrogeology volume 9). 1992. 2nd revised edition. Borntraeger, Berlin / Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 978-3-443-01050-8 [2] .
  • with Hanna Käß: German bath book . 2nd edition, Schweizerbart, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-510-65241-9 [3]

Awards

literature

  • A conversation with Werner Käss (Germany) about his contributions to tracer hydrogeology and characterization of mineral waters and spas . In: Hydrogeology Journal 17, 2009, pp. 1543-1546.
  • Deutscher Heilbäderverband (Ed.): Documentation: Festkolloquium Prof. Dr. rer. nat. Werner Käß on his 90th birthday. June 6, 2014 . 2014 ( digitized version ).

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Documentation on the festival collogium: Contributions by Martin Sauter
  2. ^ Documentation on the festival collogium: Contributions by Ralph Watzel and Martin Sauter
  3. ^ Lecture by Martin Sauer, University of Göttingen
  4. ^ Lecture by Ralph Watzel, State Office for Geology, Baden-Württemberg ,
  5. ^ German pharmacist newspaper
  6. ↑ A conversation with Werner Käss (Germany) about his contributions to tracer hydrogeology and characterization of mineral waters and spas . In: Hydrogeology Journal 17, 2009, pp. 1543-1546.
  7. ^ Documentation on the festival collogium: Contribution by Georges Schaff
  8. ↑ Textbook on oil seepage experiments
  9. ^ Documentation on the festival collogium: Contribution by Georges Schaff
  10. ↑ Grünhut Medal for Werner Käß [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / de.calameo.com  
  11. ^ Honorary membership in the Austrian Hydrogeological Association
  12. ^ Honorary member of Umkircher Mühle
  13. ^ Award for the bath book: Badische Zeitung December 14, 2013
  14. ↑ Werner Käß as a guest at Sibyllenbad, Oberpfalzzeitung, May 19, 2015
  15. ↑ Werner Käß receives Staufer Medal: Badische Zeitung, November 7, 2015
personal data
SURNAME Käß, Werner
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German geologist
DATE OF BIRTH June 6, 1924
PLACE OF BIRTH Stuttgart - Cannstatt