Heinz A. Lowenstam

Heinz Adolf Lowenstam ( born October 9, 1912 in Siemianowice, Silesia, † June 7, 1993 in California ) was a German-born American paleontologist. He is known for discoveries in biomineralization.

Lowenstam grew up in the Silesian coal fields and accumulated as a teenager fossils. He studied paleontology at the Johann -Wolfgang- Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main and from 1933 at the University of Munich, where he studied with Karl von Frisch, Ferdinand Broili and Edgar Dacqué. He took for his dissertation geological and paleontological field studies of the mountain on the east of Nazareth in Palestine (where he also petroleum geologists accompanied them on various excursions in the Middle East ), but was not able to graduate as a Jew when returning in 1936 and emigrated to the USA in 1937. In 1939 he received his doctorate at the University of Chicago. During World War II he worked in the coal and oil exploration for the Illinois Geological Survey, then worked for oil companies and was curator of paleontology of invertebrates at the Illinois State Museum, the State Museum of Natural History of Illinois at Springfield. During construction of the metro Chicago they came upon fossil coral reefs, with which Lowenstam began to employ. He discovered a continuous reef system of the Silurian of the Ozark Mountains to Greenland, which also had a direct impact on oil exploration. Lowenstam drew no financial benefit, but published the results.

In Chicago, he also came into contact with the isotope chemist Harold C. Urey and conducted research since 1950 on the use of isotopes in paleoecology, in the determination of the environment of fossil Live channels such as sea temperatures. In 1952 he went as professor to Caltech and studied isotope ratios in the formation of recent coral reefs in Bermuda. He discovered in 1961 the formation of magnetite crystals in chitons. He suspected also its use as a compass for orientation of the animals.

In 1964 he received the Paleontological Society Medal. In 1980 he became a member of the National Academy of Sciences and in the same year honorary doctorate from the University of Munich.