Albrecht Penck (1858-1945) and Walter Penck (1888-1923), two German geomorphologists - Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie Volume 27 Issue 2 — Schweizerbart science publishers
- ️Mon Jun 20 1983
Original paper
Bremer, Hanna
Abstract
Walter Penck is much cited in contributions to concepts in geomorphology in the English language, while in Germany, though he was much discussed, the impact of others, among them his father Albrecht Penck was more pronounced. It might be worthwhile to discuss Albrecht Penck and his son Walter in one essay together. In this way their ideas and influence in the field of geomorphology can be especially well illustrated. Albrecht Penck was born in Leipzig in 1858. There he began to study the natural sciences in 1875. Hermann Credner taught him geology. He received his doctoral degree in 1878 with a dissertation on volcanic pyroclasts. This had already been preceded, however, by a work on Baltic basalts in the glacial sediments in the region of Leipzig. His “Glacial Drift Formation in Northern Germany” appeared in 1879, after extented field research. Penck moved in 1880 to Munich in order to study paleontology with Zittel. Here he received his Habilitation degree in 1882 with a work on the glaciation of the German Alps. In both of these studies the repeated succession of cold and warm periods is clearly presented. Three years later he received the offer of a chair in geography in Vienna. Here, along with his student Eduard Brückner, he compiled the monumental work “The Alps in the Ice Age” (1901-1909). His two-volume “Morphology of the Earth’s Surface”, written at the suggestion of Friedrich Ratzel, had appeared already in 1894.