Famous German Geologists

In the early 1900s, meteorologist Alfred Wegener did not find too many takers for his theory that all the continents of the world had initially been a single mass named Pangaea and that continental drift had caused them to split apart. Wegener died on his fourth expedition in Greenland.

Along with his brother, Marcel Schlumberger, Conrad Schlumberger formed one of the most well-known geophysicist duos of Germany. A pioneer in petroleum production, he co-established Schlumberger Ltd., one of the world’s largest oil-field service companies, with Marcel. Their technique of oil exploration offered a cheap alternative than the existing coring methods.

German mineralogist Friedrich Mohs is remembered for inventing a decimal scale used to measure the hardness of minerals, known as the Mohs scale. A professor at the University of Vienna, he later also became the curator of the Imperial Mineralogical Collection. He also laid down a system of classifying crystals.

Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg was a German zoologist, naturalist, geologist, microscopist, and comparative anatomist. Regarded as one of the most popular and productive scientists of his generation, Ehrenberg was honored with several prestigious awards including the first Leeuwenhoek Medal in 1877.

German geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner is known as the founder of the Neptunist school that stated that all rocks an aqueous origin. He also rejected uniformitarianism of geological evolution. He also coined the term geognosy. Not too fond of reading mail, he learned of his membership of the Académie des Sciences from a journal.

Erich von Drygalski was a German geographer, polar scientist, and geophysicist. He is best remembered for leading two expeditions to explore the unexplored area of Antarctica in the early 1890s with the help of the Society for Geoscience of Berlin. Erich von Drygalski also served as a professor of geophysics and geography in Berlin.

German geographer and geologist Albrecht Penck is noted for exercising a major influence on the development of modern German geography and also for his research that confirmed the four ice ages of the European Pleistocene (Gunz, Mindel, Riss, Würm). He co-authored Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter with Eduard Bruckner, which served as a standard reference on the ice ages for many decades.

German geologist and paleontologist Christian Leopold von Buch initially worked as an inspector of mines, before his geological expedition in the Alps. He studied volcanoes in Italy and the Canary Islands and rocks in Scandinavia, too. He is, however, best remembered for defining the Jurassic System.

German paleontologist Karl aAlfred, knight von Zittel had been a professor at Karlsruhe Polytechnic and the University of Munich. Following an expedition to Libya, he proved that the Sahara had not been submerged in water during the Pleistocene Ice Age. One of his best-known works is Handbuch der Palaeontologie.

German geologist and professor Henno Martin, threatened with internment during World War II, escaped to Namib Desert along with fellow geologist Hermann Korn. The Sheltering Desert, their iconic memoir, described their experiences in the desert. He later served as the director of the Geological Survey of Namibia.

German mineralogist and geologist Johann Gottlob Lehmann is remembered for his pioneering contribution to the science of stratigraphy. He also worked a museum director and professor in Russia and discovered what is now known as crocoite. He died when an arsenic-filled retort he was working in exploded.

German-Swiss geologist Jean de Charpentier is remembered for his research on the glaciers of the Swiss Alps. He identified huge boulders, or erratics, along the Alpine landscape and concluded that the glaciers had previously been more extensive. The Charpentierbreen glacier in Svalbard is named after him.

German geologist Hans Cloos pioneered the study of granite tectonics and rock deformation models. He had also taught at the universities of Breslau and Bonn. He had worked in Indonesia and Namibia, before exploring regions of Scandinavia, North America, and England. The prestigious The Hans Cloos medal is named after him.

German geologist, mineralogist, and paleontologist Friedrich August von Quenstedt defined the stratigraphic sequence of rocks and fossils of the Jurassic Period in the Swabian region of Germany. Later, five genera and the mineral quenstedtite were named in his honor. He taught at the University of Tübingen.

Best remembered for his research on the structures of the Earth’s crust, German-American geologist Walter Herman Bucher also taught at reputed institutes such as the University of Cincinnati and Columbia University. The Penrose Medal winner also penned works such as The Deformation of the Earth’s Crust.

Adolf Overweg went down in history as the first person from Europe to circumnavigate Lake Chad. The German astronomer and geologist was part of a team that was sent to improve trade relations with Central Africa. Unfortunately, he died of a mysterious illness, which he contracted after swimming.

German geologist and petrographer Ferdinand Zirkel is remembered for his pioneering contribution to microscopic petrography. He also taught mineralogy at Lemberg University and penne the iconic work Lehrbuch der Petrographie, or Manual of Petrography, which is considered a classic in geology. He later chaired mineralogy at the University of Leipzig.

German geologist and petrographer Harry Rosenbusch was a pioneer of microscopic petrography. A professor of petrography at Strasbourg and then of mineralogy at Heidelberg, he also led the geological survey of Baden as its director. He is also known for his iconic books on mineralogy and petrography.

German physician and geologist Georg Christian Füchsel is remembered for his pioneering contribution to stratigraphy. Apart from being the court physician of Friedrich Carl, prince of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt, he also created the first geological map of Germany and nearby areas. He organized Friedrich’s natural science collections, too.