Fritz Müller (glaciologist)
Fritz Müller ( * April 16, 1926 in Sünikon; † July 26, 1980 by the Rhone glacier) was a Swiss geographer and glaciologist.
Life and work
After training as a primary school teacher and four years in the teaching profession, Fritz Mueller wrote in 1950 at the University of Zurich. Between 1952 and 1953 he studied as a participant in an expedition led by Lauge Koch, two summers structure soil in northern Greenland. He then spent Pingos, first in East Greenland, and later, 1954-1955, in the context of two expeditions McGill University in the Mackenzie Delta in northern Canada. Through this subject on which he received his doctorate in Zurich in 1959, his interests shifted from the more to the Glaciology Geomorphology. Previously, in 1956, Fritz Müller took as a scientist at the Swiss Mount Everest - Lhotse Expedition in part, where he conducted research on the Khumbu Icefall. He then worked for two years at the Laboratory of Hydraulics in Zurich.
In 1959 he became head of the run by McGill University research project on Axel Heiberg Iceland in northern Canada, which he oversaw until his death. The project took place annually excursions, including a series of measurements for mass balance of White Glacier has begun to be 38.9 km ² one of the very few large subpolar glaciers, for which such measurement series. In 1961 he was associate professor at McGill University in Montreal. After his election in 1970 as Professor of Geography with emphasis on Glaciology at ETH Zurich, he returned to Switzerland. He was an honorary professor at McGill University and participated in the Canadian Arctic, another project in attack, which focused on the exploration of the North Water ( North Water polynya ) in Baffin Bay.
In the late 1960s, Fritz Müller was involved in the activities for the creation of a global glacier inventory. In this capacity, he has published, among others, the Swiss glacier inventory of the year 1973. In 1976 he became head of the Temporary Technical Secretariat (TTS ) whose task was pressing ahead with the creation of the world Gletscheriventars. In the same year he was elected Chairman of the Permanent Service on Fluctuations of Glaciers ( PSFG ) - TTS and PSFG were the precursor ions of the organization World Glacier Monitoring Service ( WGMS ).
Fritz Müller died during a field trip to the Rhone Glacier on 26 July 1980 at the age of 54 of heart failure. He left behind a wife and two daughters.
Awards / Honors
At Fritz Müller honor of the dominant, approximately 6300 m² large plateau glacier was renamed the west of Axel Heiberg Iceland in Müller- ice cap, formerly Akaioa Ice Cap. In addition, the Müller Ice Shelf was named on the Antarctic Peninsula in Lallemand Fjord to him - this is, however, disintegrated in 1999.
Publications (selection )
- Observations on pingos. Detailed investigations in East Greenland and in the Canadian Arctic. Dissertation, 1959.
- Glaciological - climatological study in the North Water ( Canada- Greenland High Arctic ): Report on the field work from April 1 to September 29, 1974 ETH Zurich, 1974..
- With Toni Caflisch and Gerhard Müller: snow and ice in the Swiss Alps: Glacier inventory. Department of Geography, ETH Zurich, Zurich 1976.
- High North. Atlantis Verlag, Zurich 1977