Ragnar Hult

Ragnar Hult ( born March 4, 1857 in Fiskars, Finland, † September 25, 1899 in Helsinki) was a Finnish botanists, geographer and university professor.

Life

Hult was after his studies Professor of Vegetation Science and Geography at the University of Helsinki.

He was one of the pioneers of modern plant sociology, where he mainly the physiognomy of a plant stand attributed a meaning prior to his methodical approach. His ideas found mainly in Scandinavia trailer and so it is also called the "Father of the Uppsala School " in vegetation science.

Ragnar Hult 1912 together with Rutger Sernander introduced a rating scale for the absorption of plant communities, in addition to the abundance - dominance scale according to Braun- Blanquet found a meaning in the phytosociological research as only one. The so-called Hult Sernander scale, which is a dominance scale is still used, especially in Northern Europe.

Hult in 1881 published a comprehensive study on succession in a given area and was able to show here is that this starts with a relatively large number of different pioneer companies in order then only to culminate in the later stable phase a small number of plant communities.

As a geographer, he published several maps and textbooks on geography and received in 1898 a scholarship to a geographical- geological exploration trip to Spain and Central America. As a result of an illness in 1899, he returned from Spain to Finland, where he soon died.

A student Hults was Aimo Kaarlo Cajander who has the phytosociological methods Hults developed primarily for the description and classification of the Nordic forest communities.

Selected Works

• (1881 ): Försök to analytisk behandling af växtformationerna ( attempt an analytical treatment of the plant communities ). Meddelanden af Societas pro Fauna et Flora Fennica; 8: 1-155. Dissertation: Helsingin Yliopisto.
• (1883 ): Finlands gräns mot Norge mellan Enare och Varangerfjord. Helsinfors: Dagblads tryckeri.
• (1894 ): Basic Dragen af the allmänna geographer. Vol 1: Matematisk geographical och klimatografi. 215 pp. Helsinki: Weilin & Göös.
• (1896 ): Finland's geographical i korthet framställd. 112 pp. Helsinki: Söderström.
• (1898 ): Geografiska iakttagelser. Nagra anvisningar promote exkurrenter och amatörer. Geografiska Foreningens Tidskrift 10, 182-303.

Literature

• Rikkinen, Kalevi: Ragnar Hult and the emergence of geography in Finland, 1880-1900, pp. 3-192. Fennia 166:1. Helsinki: Geographical Society of Finland, 1988 ISSN 0015-0010. .

Weblink

• Runeberg.org