Alfred Gabriel Nathorst
Encyclopedia
Alfred Gabriel Nathorst (November 7, 1850 – January 20, 1921) was a Swedish
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....

 Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 explorer, geologist
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

 and palaeobotanist. Nathorst was born in Väderbrunn outside Nyköping
Nyköping
Nyköping is a locality and the seat of Nyköping Municipality, Södermanland County, Sweden with 32,427 inhabitants in 2005. The city is also the capital of Södermanland County.- History :...

 and died in Stockholm
Stockholm
Stockholm is the capital and the largest city of Sweden and constitutes the most populated urban area in Scandinavia. Stockholm is the most populous city in Sweden, with a population of 851,155 in the municipality , 1.37 million in the urban area , and around 2.1 million in the metropolitan area...

.

Biography

He was born on November 7, 1850.

Nathorst’s interest in geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...

 was awoken by Charles Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...

’s ‘’Principles of Geology‘’ and, at the age of 21, Nathorst visited Lyell
Charles Lyell
Sir Charles Lyell, 1st Baronet, Kt FRS was a British lawyer and the foremost geologist of his day. He is best known as the author of Principles of Geology, which popularised James Hutton's concepts of uniformitarianism – the idea that the earth was shaped by slow-moving forces still in operation...

 in England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 in 1872.

Nathorst was employed at the Geological Survey of Sweden
Geological Survey of Sweden
Geological Survey of Sweden is a Swedish government agency that was founded in 1858 dealing with questions about the nature of the geological and mineral management in Sweden....

 1873-84. He was then appointed professor, by royal decree of the 5th of December 1884, and was simultaneously made curator of the new “Department of Archegoniates and Fossil Plants" at the Swedish Museum of Natural History
Swedish Museum of Natural History
The Swedish Museum of Natural History , in Stockholm, is one of two major museums of natural history in Sweden, the other one being located in Gothenburg....

. He remained on the post until his retirement in 1917.

Nathorst visited Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen
Spitsbergen is the largest and only permanently populated island of the Svalbard archipelago in Norway. Constituting the western-most bulk of the archipelago, it borders the Arctic Ocean, the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea...

 in 1870 and participated 1882-83 in the 2nd Dickson Expedition ("Den andra Dicksonska Expeditionen till Grönland") led by Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld
Freiherr Nils Adolf Erik Nordenskiöld , also known as A. E. Nordenskioeld was a Finnish baron, geologist, mineralogist and arctic explorer of Finnish-Swedish origin. He was a member of the prominent Finland-Swedish Nordenskiöld family of scientists...

. He led an expedition on the ship Antarctic
Antarctic (ship)
The Antarctic was a Swedish steamship built in Drammen, Norway in 1871. She was used on several research expeditions to the Arctic region and to Antarctica through 1898-1903. In 1895 the first confirmed landing on the mainland of Antarctica was made from this ship.-The ship:Antarctic was a barque...

to Bear Island and Svalbard
Svalbard
Svalbard is an archipelago in the Arctic, constituting the northernmost part of Norway. It is located north of mainland Europe, midway between mainland Norway and the North Pole. The group of islands range from 74° to 81° north latitude , and from 10° to 35° east longitude. Spitsbergen is the...

 including the isolated Kong Karls Land
Kong Karls Land
Kong Karls Land or King Charles Land is an island group in the Svalbard archipelago, in Arctic Ocean. The island group covers an area of and is made up of the islands of Kongsøya, Svenskøya, Abeløya, Helgolandøya and Tirpitzøya....

 in 1898. The following year (1899), Nathorst led an expedition to Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

. This second expedition had as the dual purpose of geographical mapping and of searching for survivors of S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897
S. A. Andrée's Arctic balloon expedition of 1897 was an ill-fated effort to reach the North Pole in which all three expedition members perished. S. A. Andrée , the first Swedish balloonist, proposed a voyage by hydrogen balloon from Svalbard to either Russia or Canada, which was to pass,...

. The Andreé expedition was not found, however. The two expeditions are described in two volumes "Två somrar i Norra Ishavet" (in Swedish
Swedish language
Swedish is a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish...

).

Starting with macrofossil deposited in glacial clay found in Scania
Scania
Scania is the southernmost of the 25 traditional non-administrative provinces of Sweden, constituting a peninsula on the southern tip of the Scandinavian peninsula, and some adjacent islands. The modern administrative subdivision Skåne County is almost, but not totally, congruent with the...

 in 1871, Nathorst investigated postglacial development in flora
Flora
Flora is the plant life occurring in a particular region or time, generally the naturally occurring or indigenous—native plant life. The corresponding term for animals is fauna.-Etymology:...

 and vegetation
Vegetation
Vegetation is a general term for the plant life of a region; it refers to the ground cover provided by plants. It is a general term, without specific reference to particular taxa, life forms, structure, spatial extent, or any other specific botanical or geographic characteristics. It is broader...

. He also researched on plant remains from older geological eras, such as palaeozoic and mesozoic
Mesozoic
The Mesozoic era is an interval of geological time from about 250 million years ago to about 65 million years ago. It is often referred to as the age of reptiles because reptiles, namely dinosaurs, were the dominant terrestrial and marine vertebrates of the time...

 from the Arctic
Arctic
The Arctic is a region located at the northern-most part of the Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean and parts of Canada, Russia, Greenland, the United States, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and Iceland. The Arctic region consists of a vast, ice-covered ocean, surrounded by treeless permafrost...

 and tertiary
Tertiary
The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...

 from Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. These investigations made himan internationally acknowledged authority on palaeobotany. palaebotanical.

Nathorst had a scientific dispute with Eugen Warming over the history of the flora of Greenland. Warming adhered to the hypothesis that part of the flora had survived the last glaciation - the nunatak hypothesis
Nunatak hypothesis
In biogeography, particularly phytogeography, the nunatak hypothesis about the origin of a biota in formerly glaciated areas refers to the idea that some or many species have survived the inhospitable period on icefree land such as nunataks...

, while Nathorst advocated the view that the entire flora had immigrated anew after the glaciation - the tabula rasa hypothesis. Disputes with similar antitheses have later been repeated for other areas by other combatants.

He was elected member of a large number of learned societies, including the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences or Kungliga Vetenskapsakademien is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. The Academy is an independent, non-governmental scientific organization which acts to promote the sciences, primarily the natural sciences and mathematics.The Academy was founded on 2...

 (1885). He died on January 20, 1921.

Legacy

A number of plant, animal and fungal species have been named to his honour, e.g. Saxifraga nathorstii (Dusén
Per Karl Hjalmar Dusén
Per Karl Hjalmar Dusén was a Swedish civil engineer, botanist and explorer. As a botanist his interests included pteridology, bryology and paleobotany. He made botanical expeditions to Africa, Greenland and South America....

) Hayek
August von Hayek
August von Hayek was an Austrian botanist who was a native of Vienna. He was born as a son of Gustav von Hayek, and August was the father of economist Friedrich August von Hayek ....

 (East Greenland saxifrage) and a suite of fossil plant species, Williamsonia
Williamsonia
Williamsonia is a fossil genus of Bennettitales, an extinct group of seed plants. The plants looked a bit like a cycad, with slender trunks up to two meters tall topped with a crown of leaves....

 nathorstii
Carruthers (a fossil dragonfly
Dragonfly
A dragonfly is a winged insect belonging to the order Odonata, the suborder Epiprocta or, in the strict sense, the infraorder Anisoptera . It is characterized by large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and an elongated body...

) and Laestadites nathorstii Mesch. (a fossil fungus).

Nathorst Land in East Central Greenland
Greenland
Greenland is an autonomous country within the Kingdom of Denmark, located between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans, east of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago. Though physiographically a part of the continent of North America, Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe for...

is named after him.

External Links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK