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Historical Bibliography Updated: March 24, 2018

Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit.

Publication Details

Berlin: Gebrüder Bornträger, 1924 CE.

Translated as The climates of the geological past. Die Klimate der geologischen Vorzeit. Reproduction of the original German edition and complete English translation. Faksimile-Nachdruck der deutschen Originalausgabe und komplette englische Neuübersetzung. Edited by Jörn Thiede; Karin Lochte; Angelika Dummermuth. Translated by Bernard Oelkers. Stuttgart, Schweizerbart, 2015.

"Wegener is best known for his theory of continental drift (The Origin of the Continents and Oceans, 1915). Less widely known, but equally important, are the studies he conducted on the climates of the past (with his colleague and father-in-law, Wladimir Köppen), which they jointly published (this book). Only one edition of the book was published, but unfortunately, all – save a few private copies – were destroyed during the second World War, rendering the book essentially unavailable. 
This English translation ... includes the ‘Supplements and Corrections’ by ­Wladimir Köppen to this book, published in 1940, shortly before his death and a decade after Alfred Wegener’s untimely death on Greenland. The translation (and the facsimile) have both been enhanced by subject indices, which the original book was lacking.

"The discussion of the course and causal relationship of climates and climate change in the geological past are of principal scientific interest. Important elements of the discussions herein stem from the close collaboration with Milutin Milankovitch (who contributed entire sections of text, but is not named as an author). Building on the principles of the Milankovitch frequencies allowed Köppen and Wegener – for the first time, early in the last century – to establish a precise time scale of Late Cenozoic glacial-inter­glacial cycles. More recently, the orbital parameters originally calculated by Milankovitch were refined using time series data from deep-sea sediments and ice cores. Furthermore, Milankovitch’s cycles may be extrapolated into the future to predict climate change. This very book, in which Köppen and Wegener roll out their theory, is therefore an important publication which has early on shaped our understanding of how climate has evolved and continuously evolves in the course of time." (publisher).

Catalog MetadataReference Information
Entry Number#9919
Permanent Linkhttps://staging.historyofmedicine.com/entry/12107
Author Bio LinkWikipedia ↗
External URLdie-klimate-der-geologischen-vorzeit

Geographic Context

Publication place: Berlin

Mentioned in annotation: Stuttgart