    4 Oct 2015 @ 14:06, by Heiner Benking
The GeoBerlin 2015 [link] is kicked-off today at FU-Berlin by the GeoUnion [link] and other partners/sponsors. The pre-event is celebrating a figure which is one of my "unknown heros": Alfred Wegener [link]
I cite this for onlookers not from the GEO-family so they can digest what he achieved, how extraordinary and different he was:
"Exactly 100 years ago the most outstanding German Geoscientist Alfred Wegener published the first edition of his seminal book “Die Enstehung der Kontinente und Ozeane” (“The Origin of Continents and Oceans”). Today we all know that his seminal hypothesis was only accepted once the pieces of the “plate tectonics” puzzle were put together in the 1960’s. Wegener was 50 years ahead of his time. We should never forget that Wegener was a metereologist and astronomist. He pursued his research on the thermodynamcis of the atmosphere and impact craters with as much energy as his development of “continental drift”.
In our meeting Dynamic Earth – from Alfred Wegener to today and beyond we will review how Wegener‘s findings evolved into to modern Earth system science including its impact on climate and the Earth surface, and how this system affects our daily life: where humans live, what risks we are exposed to, where we find our resources. .... "
Besider Carl Ritter **** Alfred Wegener was one who followed his scientific vigor and intuition, despite all the eminences and egos in science not only those days....
So lets check out the REVOLUION OF GEOSCIENCES !!
I strongly recommend the book of Franz Wuketis: [link] "Outsiders in Science: Pioneers, Trailblazers, Reformers" unfortunately on in in German: Gegen den Strom schwimmen - ein Buch über eigensinnige, mutige, selbstbewusste, hartnäckige Forscher, die als Amateure oder ... [link] who covers such uncompromising, leading, visionary thinkers which were not years, but decades ahead of their times.
I worked 24 years ago with the founding president of the Alfred Wegener Foundation, Friedrich Strauch on exhibitions, fairs, international halls and a profile of the foundation. All recorded, see the Geotechnica opening in 1991, the 2 hall the foundation managed "Local and Global Change" [link] and Members of the Foundation hall with the exhibition introducing the AWS: [link]
but unfortunately the foundation did not survive and tansferred into something quite different, the GeoUnion - Alfred Wegener Stiftung, unfortunately even the GeoTechnica as "the marketplace" of the Earth did not survive.... and I "lost" years of work and investing into such a great venture. Check the websites, no comments as you see how little of the wide courageous intentions and visions of its founding president survived.
Geo Künstler und Geo Juristen ! A great opening lecture by Celâl Şengör https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cel%C3%A2l_%C5%9Eeng%C3%B6r a plea for another science, with intuition and creativity.... MANY THANKS - check it out !
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The Geographers met last week and Geologists start today. Flatlanders and Deeplanders? Not really ay more. They all use 2D and 3D and there is some progress the last 100 or 200 years. I will come back to this issue in the next days as the Geologists are mcuh more technology driven, multi-D, visualization, modelling,..... all the stuff I was so excited about in the 80ies..... - but now it is "standard" and we have to cope with the Challenges applying such "new tools". Check the programme of GeoBerlin 2015 [link] I am thinking back to the Geotechnica 1991 and the LOCAL AND GLOBAL CHANGE exhibition: [link] - In retrospect it is interesting to remember how much enthusiasm we had those days ... - But the times were not right and even the Alfred Wegener Foundation transformed itself unfortunately... CHECK asks and objectives as part of a profile of the Alfred Wegener Foundation: AWS Aufgaben und Ziele: [link]
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