Willi Ziegler

This article deals with the paleontologist Willi Ziegler. For other people see Willy Ziegler .

Willi Ziegler (born March 13, 1929 in Villingen , Hesse; † August 8, 2002 ) was a German paleontologist . From 1980 to 1995 he was director of the Senckenberg Society for Nature Research and the Senckenberg Nature Museum in Frankfurt am Main .

Life

Ziegler was the son of a miner and graduated from high school in Gießen in 1949. From 1950 he studied geology in Cologne and at the University of Marburg , where he also heard palaeontology from Rudolf Richter in 1953/54 in Frankfurt am Main . In 1956 he received his doctorate in Marburg under Carl Walter Kockel (1898–1966) ( The Conodonten Stratigraphy from Unter-Ems to Unter-Givet ). Heinz Beckmann had previously pointed out the possibility of stratigraphy in the Devonian and Carboniferous with conodonts in 1953. Simultaneously with Ziegler, Günther Bischoff (1928–1999) was doing his doctorate in Marburg, and conodont research and stratigraphy were later a focus topic in Marburg. In 1958 Ziegler came to the Geological State Office of North Rhine-Westphalia in Krefeld, where he set up a conodont laboratory and mapped it in the Sauerland . In 1962 he completed his habilitation in Bonn, also through Conodonten des Oberdevon . In 1965/66 he was visiting professor at the University of Texas at Austin . In 1968 he became Scientific Councilor and in 1971 Professor at the University of Marburg. There he examined conodonts with the scanning electron microscope and began to publish the Catalog of Conodonts from 1973 . In 1972/73 he was dean of his department. In 1980 he became director of the Senckenberg Nature Museum and Research Institute in Frankfurt am Main. In 1995 he retired.

With Ziegler, the focus of Devonian research (especially in the Eifel) of the Senckenberg Museum, which has existed since Richter, was expanded to include the possibilities of fine stratigraphy with conodonts, which are now standard key fossils in fine stratigraphy in Devonian. This also led to an increased international orientation of the Senckenberg Museum in the 1970s.

1970 to 1980 he headed the German sub-commission for Devonian stratigraphy and 1976 to 1984 the international sub-commission. From 1984 to 1992 he was Vice President (1st Vice-Chairman) of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS) of the IUGS. During this time (1981/82) the GSSP for the Eifelium was defined in the Wetteldorfer directional section examined by Richter . From 1975 to 1990 he was in the Senate Commission of the German Research Foundation (DFG) for joint geoscientific projects (Geo-Commission), from 1978 to 1985 as chairman. For the DFG, he was also instrumental in establishing contacts with the Soviet Union, Poland and China. He was on the executive committee of the Alfred Wegener Foundation . He was a member of the Academia Europaea .

He was particularly concerned with the Devonian stratigraphy with conodonts as key fossils.

Honors

• 1974 Henry Dumont Medal of the Belgian Geological Society
• 1985 Coke Medal from the Geological Society of London
• 1988 Gold Medal of the Pander Society (International Association of Conodont Researchers, founded in 1967)
• 1990 Federal Cross of Merit, 1st class
• 1993 Goethe plaque from the city of Frankfurt am Main
• 1995 Hessian Order of Merit
• 1995 Golden Senckenberg Medal
• 1997 honorary member of the Paleontological Society, of which he was deputy chairman from 1972 to 1973
• 1998 Goethe plaque from the State of Hesse
• 1999 Cretzschmar Medal of the Senckenberg Natural Research Society

Works

• as editor: Francis Leroy: Mikrokosmos. Insights into the world of cells (= Kleine Senckenberg series. No. 19). W. Kramer, Frankfurt am Main 1991, ISBN 3-7829-1088-5 .

Web links

• Obituary at the Senckenberg Museum , excerpt from the obituary by Karsten Weddige , paleontologist. Journal, Volume 77, 2003, p. 1

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Strutz: Funeral speech for Prof. Dr. Willi Ziegler. In: Nature and Museum. NuM. The Senckenberg nature magazine. Vol. 132, 2002, ISSN  0178-1286 , p. 393.