CORRENS, CARL WILHELM

(b. Tübingen, Germany, 19 May 1893; d. Göttingen, Germany, 29 August 1980)

sedimentary petrology, mineralogy, geochemistry.

Correns was the son of Carl Erich Correns and Elisabeth Widmer. His father, a botanist, was one of the founders of modern genetics. After serving as assistant professor at Leipzig and as professor at Münster, he was the first director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Biology at Berlin-Dahlem. His mother, a native of Switzerland, was also a botanist.

Correns began his studies in natural sciences at the universities of Tübingen and Münster in 1912. After the war he went to Berlin, where he received a Ph.D. in 1920. His dissertation, supervised by J. F. Pompeckji, on limestone lenses in a Middle Devonian slate, marked the beginning of his lifelong preoccupation with the petrogenesis of sedimentary rocks.

On 30 December 1921 Correns married Agnes Ballowitz, daughter of Emil Ballowitz, professor of anatomy at the University of Münster. They had a son and a daughter. After an assistantship at the Geological Institute of the University at Munich under Erich Kaiser, Correns in 1921 entered the Prussian Geological Survey. Besides geological mapping of a Paleozoic area in Hesse, he refreshed his knowledge of chemistry by working in the laboratory of Herbert Freundlich at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physical Chemistry in Berlin-Dahlem. As a result of his Habilitationsschrift on the formation of sedimentary ore deposits through adsorption of metal ions by clays, Correns was appointed Privatdozent in mineralogy and petrography at the University of Berlin.

In 1926 and 1927 Correns took part in the German Atlantic Expedition on the ship Meteor. He was charged with the investigation of deep-sea sediments collected at several profiles across the South Atlantic. On this occasion Correns studied diamond occurrences in the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil. Contacts with Brazilian colleagues led to another voyage to Brazil in 1930 and a guest professorship at Sāo Paulo in 1958.

Correns was appointed associate professor of mineralogy and geology at the University of Rostock in 1927 and full professor in 1930. In 1938 he accepted the posts of professor of mineralogy and director of the new Institute of Sedimentary Petrography at the University of Göttingen. From 1941 until his retirement in 1961, Correns was also director of the Institute of Mineralogy and Petrography at Göttingen.

Correns was one of the founders of modern sedimentary petrology, which deals with the identification of sedimentary minerals and the explanation of the phenomena of weathering, sedimentation, and diagenesis by physicochemical processes. While in Rostock, he did pioneering work in applying X-ray diffraction to the investigation of fine-grained sediments. It was found that clays are not amorphous substances, as formerly believed, but mixtures of well-defined crystalline minerals such as kaolinite, halloysite, montmorillonite, and mica minerals. Granulometric methods were developed for dividing sediments into grain size classes that could be investigated by optical microscopy. X-ray diffraction, and chemical analysis. The Meteor samples from the bottom of the South Atlantic were mineralogically and chemically investigated by these methods. The main types of deep-sea sediments and their areal distribution were established. For the first time the mineralogical composition of several clays and soils was determined. Observations on the decomposition of primary minerals in soil profiles gave rise to laboratory investigations on the reactions of minerals such as mica and feldspar with aqueous solutions under weathering conditions. It was found that silicates dissolve inoionic solutions at velocities depending on temperature and acidity.

In acknowledgment of Correns’ achievements, the Institute of Sedimentary Petrography was established for him at Göttingen in 1938. There he continued investigations on the mineralogical composition of sedimentary rocks and conducted further experiments on weathering of silicates. Investigations on the influence of pressure on crystal growth and dissolution were important for the explanation of the diagenetic consolidation of buried sediments. Continuing Victor M. Goldschmidt’s geochemical work at Göttingen, Correns and his students studied the geochemistry of halogens, chromium, carbon, sulfur, zinc, nitrogen, and titanium, with special attention to sedimentary cycles. In the Laboratory for Stable Isotopes, installed at Göttingen under his leadership in 1959. Correns initiated investigations on isotope geochemistry.

Correns was an inspiring and popular teacher who by his lectures and his readiness to communicate inspired many geology and mineralogy students. At Rostock and Göttingen he supervised sixty-one doctoral dissertations.

Correns was a member of the Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Halle), the Akademieder Wissenschaften in Göttingen, the Romanian Academy of Sciences, the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Accademia delle Scienze of Bologna, the Swedish Academy of Sciences, and the Serbian Academy of Sciences. He received honorary doctorates from the universities of Tübingen and Clausthal, and was elected to honorary memberships of geological and mineralogical societies in Germany, the United States, Spain, and Switzerland. Several societies awarded Correns their medals; the Göteborgs, Kungliga Vetenskapsoch Vitterhets Samhálle, the (silver) Albatross Medal (1955); the Geologische Vereinigung, the Steinmann Medal (1957); the Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft, the Stille Medal (1963); and the Mineralogical Society of America, the Roebling Medal (1963).

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Correns’ writings include “Über die Bestandteile der Tone.” in Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft. 85 (1933). 706–712: Die Sedimente des äquatorialen Atlantischen Ozeans. vol. III of Wissenschaftliche Ergebnisse der Deutschen Atlantischen Expedition (Berlin and Leipzig, 1935). 1–42 and (1937), 135–298. trans, by George M. Griffin as The Sediments of the Equatorial Atlantic Ocean (Houston, Tex. 1958); “Die Tone.” in Geologische Rundschau. 29 (1938), 201–208; “Die Sedimentgesteine,” in Thomas W. Barth. C. W. Correns, and Pentti Eskola. Die Entstehung der Gesteine (Berlin. 1939; repr. 1970), one of the first textbooks on sedimentary petrology; “Die chemische Verwitterung der Silikate,” in Naturwissenschaften, 28 (1940), 369–375:’ Die Stoffwanderung in der Erdrinde,’ ibid., 31 (1943). 35–42: “Crystal Growth: Growth and Dissolution of Crystals Under Linear Pressure.” in Discussions of the Faraday Society, 5 (1949), 267–271: Einführung in die Mineralogie, Kristallographie und Petrologie (Berlin, 1949; 2nd. rev. ed., with Josef Zeman and Sigmund Koritnig. 1968) 2nd ed. trans, by William D. Johns as Introduction to Mineralogy, Crystallography and Petrography (London and New York, 1969); “Zur Geochemie der Diagenese 1. Das Verhalten von CaCO, und SiO₂,” in Geochimica and Cosmochimia Acta, 1 (1950). 49–54; “The Geochemistry of the Halogens, in L. H. Alliens, Kalervo Rankama, and S. K. Runcorn, eds., Physics and Chemistry of the Earth. I (New York, 1956). 181–233;’ The Experimental Weathering of Silicates,” in Clay Minerals Bulletin, 4 (1961). 249–265; and “The Discovery of the Chemical Elements. The History of Geochemistry,” in K. H. Wedepohl, ed., Handbook of Geochemistry. I(Berlin and New York, 1969, 1–11.

II. Secondary Literature. A complete bibliography of Correns’ publications is part of Wolf von Engelhardt. “Carl Wilhelm Correns 1893–1980.” in Fortschritte der Mineralogie, 59 (1981), 1–12. See also Wolf von Engelhardt. “Carl Wilhelm Correns,” in Geologische Rundschau, 70 , no. 3 (1981); Joachim Hoefs, “Memorial of Carl Wilhelm Correns,” in American Mineralogist, 67 (1982). 399–400; P. Sehneiderhön. “In Memoriam Carl W. Correns,” in Der Aufschluss (1981); W. Sehott. “Carl Wilhelm Correns,” in Nachrichten der Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft, 24 (1980). 4;and K. H. Wedepohl. “Carl Wilhelm Correns,” in Almanach der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. 130 (1980).

Wolf Von Engelhardt