Prominent foreign geomorphologist Albrecht Penck (1858–1945)

Abstract

The vast geomorphological heritage of the outstanding German scientist Albrecht Penck mainly related to general geomorphology, the geomorphology of mountains, climatology, hydrology and hypsometric maps, has so far been insufficiently known by Soviet/Russian geomorphologists. His fundamental studies are related to the last twenty years of the 19^th and the first quarter of the 20^th century. He was engaged in fieldwork in Europe–mainly in the Alps and the Danube basin, the mountains of Spain, North Morocco, and also in Canada, Australia, China, Japan and some other countries, and created the first classification of climates. Together with Eduard Bruckner, he was co-author of a concept of ancient glaciation; they were the first to identify the four ice ages of the European Pleistocene (Gunz, Mindel, Riss, Würm). Albrecht Penck enriched geomorphology with the concept of “summit level of denudation”. He was convinced that the heights of the snow- and forest-line were responsible for mountain heights, the rate of denudation and therefore, determine the height of the summit level of denudation (gipfelflur) for each climate. Later, he moved away from these ideas and introduced the term “summit surface” poining to the constant eleveation of the summit levels without explaining the phenomenon per se. Academician Konstantin Markov spoke of Albrecht Penck as one of the prominent geomorphologists with rich scientific heritage and as “Nestor the Chronicler of foreign geomorphology”. For a long time Penck was a Director of the Institute and Museum of Oceanography in Berlin and a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. He was well-known in the academic circles of Russia, some of his works were published in Russian; he regularly visited Russia and was elected honorary member of the Moscow Society of Naturalists, Russia’s oldest society of nature explorers set up in 1805. In 1859, von Humboldt-Ritter Stiftung (the Humboldt-Ritter Foundation) was set up in Germany and actively functioned after their deaths. After Pencks death died in 1945 the foundation was transformed to Humboldt-Ritter-Penck Foundation, and has been active up to now days.