Mineral. Deposita 20,233 (1985)

MINERALIUM DEPOSITA © Springer-Verlag 1985

Paul Ramdohr- In memoriam Professor Paul Ramdohr, Honorary ]?resident of the SGA, died at his home on 8 March 1985, at the age of 95. His 95th birthday (1 January 1985) was celebrated by an international symposium on "Crystal Growth Dating of Ore Minerals" at the Institute of Mineralogy and Petrology of the University of Heidelberg; this was, in fact, a direct and logical result of his life-long research on the intergrowth and paragenesis of ore and gangue minerals. Paul Ramdohr was a founding :member of the SGA and its Honorary President from the very beginning in 1965. Ramdohr had a marked influence on the development of mineralogy and ore genesis in at least three ways. From the beginning of his scientific career he insisted on inductive research, i.e., the observation must precede the theory, and any hypothesis is suspect unless enough observations are at hand. Furthermore, he was a master in combining geometric with geochemical observations and suggested the construction of it microprobe in the 1950s, in order to overcome the limitations of his own principal method, ore microscopy. Thirdly, he also insisted in combining observations in nature with experimental evidence. In at least these three ways he was a most valuable and honored mentor to our Society and to science as a whole. The scientific work of Paul Ramdohr has been summarized in three Festschriften in honor of his 70th, 80th and 90th anniversary. The classic mineralogy textbook, Klockrnann-Ramdohr (which was published together with H. Strunz beginning in 1967), has been published in 16 new editions. His The Ore Minerals and Their Intergrowths has gone through four German and l:wo English editions and was translated into Russian and Chinese (in parts). Ramdohr offered critical evidence for the now prevailing synsedimentary interpretation of such major ore deposits as the massive stratabound sulfide-barite deposit of Rammelsberg, the Witwatersrand Au-U-deposits, and Broken Hill in Australia. I was fortunate enough to be able to present my own observations to him, in the field and under the microscope, on the Mississippi Valley type of ore deposits and to convince him of the diagenetic age of the major sulfides. Jointly, congruences on all five scales were then established as valid criteria in ore genesis. Paul Ramdohr was born on 1 January 1890 as the son of a pharmacist in Oberlingen on Lake Constance. After years of military service, he obtained his Ph.D. in 1919 at

the University of G/3ttingen with a thesis on the basalts of the Blaue Kuppe, specifically the cristobalites in them. O. Mtigge was his advisor. After assistantships in Darmstadt and the School of Mines in Clausthal, he qualified as a senior lecturer in 1921 under W. Bruhns at Clausthal. In 1926, he was appointed Professor of Mineralogy at the Institute of Technology of Aachen, and in 1934 at the University of Berlin. The comprehensive result of the first 20years of intensive research on ore minerals was the monograph published with Schneiderh6hn in 1931-1933. After difficult war and post-war years and a stay in Australia, in 1950 Ramdohr accepted the Chair in Mineralogy and Petrology of the University of Heidelberg. Here, a most extensive period of research and teaching led to new editions of his books and many special publications. After his retirement, he concentrated mostly on opaques in extraterrestrial material. Up to the time of his eye operations in the late 1980s he taught a much-attended course in ore genesis with his large ore-sample collection. Into his nineties, he was a much-appreciated advisor to guests, colleagues, friends, and students, and a vivid lecturer at scientific meetings. During his lifetime many honors were conferred on him. Only a few can be named. He was given an Honorary Doctor's Degree by the Universities and/or Institutes of Technology of Berlin, Aachen, Clausthal, Nancy, and Madrid, and elected to membership of the Academies of Science of Berlin, Heidelberg, and Halle (Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina). Numerous scientific societies made him an honorary or a corresponding member, or bestowed a medal upon him ("Stern zum Grogen Verdienstkreuz des Verdienstordens der Bundesrepublik Deutschland," Penrose Medal of the Society of Economic Geologists; Georg Agricola-Medal of the "Gesellschaft Deutscher Metallhfitten- und Bergleute," etc.). When he died, we lost a truly outstanding mineralogist and ore geneticist; however, his numerous, internationally famous contributions will permit his spirit of a critical inductive approach to problems of ore genesis to live on for many generations. He was one of the greatest earth scientists of this century. On 31 January 1986, a commemorative symposium will be held at the Heidelberg Institute. G. C. Amstutz