Walther Penck

Walther Penck ( born August 30, 1888 in Vienna, † September 29, 1923 in Stuttgart ) was a German geologist and geomorphologist. He was the son of the geographer Albrecht Penck.

Life

Penck studied from 1907 in Berlin, Vienna and Heidelberg, mineralogy, mathematics, physics and chemistry. 1908/ 09 he was with his father in the U.S., as this exchange was a professor at Columbia University, where he met, among others, Grove Karl Gilbert, and traveled with him about Hawaii, Japan, China and Siberia to Germany. In 1910 he was in Heidelberg Ph.D. in Geology at William Salomon - Calvi with a thesis on the geological construction of the mountains of Predazzo. He had his beginnings in the geology of the Alps, originally minearlogic interests. A visit to the Kilauea in Hawaii turned his interest to the geology and volcanology specifically what was reflected also in his thesis. Penck conducted research from 1912 to 1914 in Argentina, where he 12,000 square kilometers on the southern edge of the Puna de Atacama recorded geologically and topographically on behalf of the Argentine Mining Administration under difficult conditions ( a high plateau in the Andes ). He conducted numerous first ascents six thousand in the Andes. In 1914 he qualified as a professor in Leipzig ( main features in the construction of the southern margin of the Puna de Atacama ) and 1914/15 he was involved as a soldier in the First World War in the fighting in Alsace. In 1915 he became professor of geology in Istanbul. He explored during the First World War, the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles area (including its coal deposits ) and traveled through Asia Minor in 1917, where he visited the Uludağ and fell ill with malaria. While he was at a spa in Germany in the summer of 1918, burned down in 1918 to be constructed by him institution with all its collections in Istanbul down. From 1919 he taught as a professor at the University of Leipzig, but fell ill with cancer in 1922, where he died at the age of 35. Most recently, he devoted himself to studies, particularly over the Black Forest. Many of his works published posthumously as his unfinished masterpiece The morphological analysis.

He developed a geomorphologic model, which provided a much more variable sequence of crustal movements as the theory of William Morris Davis (1850-1934) Particularly as a result of his studies in the Andes. He distinguished in particular two types of crustal motion, once the bulk folding, for example in the Alps with lateral compression and synclines on the flanks, and a bulge, with a slow start and the end of the elevations that were temporarily accelerated. The latter he also studied in the Black Forest and made it for the hull step formation ( Piedmonttreppen ) responsible. Both main types of crustal movement could also act simultaneously according to Penck. Penck recommended methodologically first in the sedimentation for clues to the crustal movement to explain the morphology to search. To He said, for example, from the valley shape close to ascending and descending trends ( concave slopes - decreasing increasing or decreasing, convex slopes - increasing) and saw climatic influences as secondary. In the U.S., his works were initially by criticism of Davis and his school overshadowed ( the Penck's ideas reproductions partially distorted), his major work, but was translated in the 1950s, and his ideas were taken differentiated. Penck regarded as the last exponent of the classical tectonic geomorphology, have been many suggestions for further research, whose views and methods but were overtaken by further research ( and partially refuted in the 1920s in terms of climate impact ).

In 1923, he received the Carl- Ritter- Medal of the Geographical Society in Berlin.

He was married and had two sons.

Others

In honor of Walther Penck of Cazadero, a six-thousand in Argentina was renamed to Walther Penck.

Works

  • Forces of nature in the high mountains, Stuttgart, Strecker and Schröder 1912
  • The tectonic basics of western Asia Minor, Stuttgart 1918
  • Broad geology of the Bosphorus, Berlin, Mittler and Son 1919 ( Publications of the Institute of Oceanography at the University, pp. 1-71 )
  • The southern edge of the Puna de Atacama (NW - Argentina). A contribution to the knowledge of the Andean mountain type, and to the question of mountain building, Abh Saxon. Acad. , Mathematics and Natural Sciences. Class, Volume 37, Leipzig 1920, pp. 1-420
  • The southern Puna de Atacama ( Cordillera Northwest Argentina ), Geological character images 21, Berlin 1921
  • Morphological analysis: a chapter of the physical geology, Geographical essays, number 2,2, 1924, pp. 1-283 and published separately at Engelhorn, Stuttgart 1924 ( edited by his father Albrecht Penck, with biography Walther Penck Albrecht Penck )
  • English Translation: Morphological analysis of landforms. A contribution to physical geology, New York, St. Martin's Press 1953, New York, Hafner Publ 1972 ( also translated into Russian )
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