Ferdinand von Hochstetter

Christian Gottlob Ferdinand Ritter von Hochstetter ( born April 30, 1829 in Esslingen am Neckar, † July 18, 1884 in Vienna ) was a German -Austrian geologist, naturalist and explorer.

Life and activities

The son of the Esslingen city minister Christian Ferdinand Friedrich Hochstetter (1787-1860) and his fourth wife Sofie Friederike Orth (* 1795 in Heilbronn, † 1861) graduated after passing the Country exam the convent school in Maulbronn and studied at the University of Tübingen theology and the natural sciences. During his studies he became a member of the Tübingen Royal Society Roigel. After that he went to Austria, where he took up geology for the Geological Reichsanstalt the Bohemian Forest, the Carlsbad Mountains, Ore Mountains and the western parts of the " basaltic highlands of Bohemia " ( Central Mountains ). In 1856, he was a lecturer at the University of Vienna.

In 1857 he was commissioned by the Vienna Imperial Academy of Sciences at the Austrian frigate Novara Weltumseglungsexpedition part (Novara expedition ). In New Zealand, he stayed behind to explore the land geology and map. Thus originate from Hochstetter the first geological maps of New Zealand, the region around Nelson he had recorded with Julius Haast. In his field studies on the Dun Mountain at Nelson he discovered a rock had not yet classified and named it after its type locality dunite. Its first scientific description was made by him in 1864.

Back in Austria, he was appointed in 1860 as professor of geology and mineralogy at the Vienna University of Technology and led from 1876 as director of the Natural History Court Museum. One of the first Hochstetter occurred in 1860 publicly advocated Darwinism. Is all the more remarkable is that he just was determined by the Imperial Household to the teacher of the Crown Prince Rudolf. He made repeated traveled extensively in scientific interest. He traveled in 1863 to Switzerland and Italy, 1869 European Turkey, in 1872 Russia and the Urals. From him comes the first geological overview map of the Balkan region, which was then still part of the Ottoman Empire. In 1868 published Hochstetter in Vienna the first attempt to explain the tidal waves caused by earthquakes in the oceans.

Ferdinand von Hochstetter died on July 18, 1884 in Oberdöbling near Vienna (now in Vienna's 19th district) and was in a grave of honor in Vienna's Central Cemetery (Group 14 A, number 41) was buried.

The geologist Egbert Wilhelm von Hochstetter was his son.

First scientific description of a tsunami event

In experiencing his participation in the Novara expedition, in which he also dealt with phenomena of volcanism, Hochstetter pursued by Vienna from the effects of the incident on August 13, 1868 earthquake off the former Peruvian coastal Peru ( epicenter today Chile lying).

The tidal wave ( tsunami ), on 15 August, the East Coast of New Zealand and Australia. Hochstetter here recognized the connection between earthquakes and tidal waves spreading in Pacific Ocean. The remarkable thing about his conclusions is that Hochstetter recognized the causal relationships right from him arriving on at the level then post information from Australia, Honolulu, New Zealand and Peru. The knowledge he succeeded long before the time, could describe as a geophysicist the operation of tsunami events scientifically accurate.

Hochstetter is one of the first scientists who understood such tidal waves in the seas as a result of tectonic events. His first such publication was published in 1868 in the meeting reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna ( Math and Science Class I, Division 2 ). It was entitled About the earthquake in Peru on August 13, 1868, which thereby led Fluthwellen in Pacifischen ocean, especially on the coast of Chili and New Zealand. From a distance between South America and New Zealand, the average depth of the sea and the delayed arrival of the wave at the Australian coast, he derived a propagation speed of 368 miles per hour. Hochstetter left a hand sketch, in which he shows the timing of a tsunami. This document was found a few years ago to note the scientist Eleanor Hoke of the Victoria University of Wellington in the historical archives of the Geological Survey of Vienna. The tsunami event described by him with a magnitude of 9.0 taught at the coast of South America and the Pacific Rim to devastating damage that also called for thousands of deaths.

Tributes and honors

In 1884 (2nd district) was named the street after him Hochstetter in Vienna Leopoldstadt.

According to the researchers several geographical locations and botanical species are named:

• The Hochstetter Peak ( 2822 m) in the Southern Alps and the Lake Hochstetter
• The Hochstetter Fjord in Greenland
• The Südinseltakahe ( Porphyrio hochstetteri ), a bird of New Zealand Rail
• The Hochstetter Frog ( Leiopelma hochstetteri ), an endemic New Zealand frog species from the family of the New Zealand Urfrösche
• The glowing blue mushroom Entoloma hochstetteri from the kind of Rötlinge, which is native to New Zealand and India.

Writings (selection )

• New Zealand. Stuttgart 1863
• Geological and topographical atlas of New Zealand. Gotha 1863
• Travel the Austrian frigate Novara around the Earth. 3 vols Vienna ( 1964-1966 )
• About the earthquake in Peru on August 13, 1868, which thereby led Fluthwellen in Pacifischen ocean, especially on the coast of Chili and New Zealand, in 1868, published in the meeting reports of the Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna ( Math and Science Class I, Division 2 )
• Journey through Rumelia. In: Reports of the Geographical Society in Vienna (1870-1971)
• About the Urals. Berlin 1873
• Geological images of other times and now the world - to the teaching of intuition and instruction in school and family, Schreiber, Esslingen 1873.
• Asia: its future cars and coal resources. Vienna 1876