Reinout Willem van Bemmelen

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Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (April 14 1904 Batavia (Dutch East Indies) - November 19 1983 Unterpirkach (Austria)) was a Dutch geologist. His main interest lay with structural geology, economic geology and volcanology. He is known for his work on these subjects and on the geology of Indonesia.

Rein van Bemmelen spent his youth in the Dutch East Indies, where his father Willem van Bemmelen was the director of the Magnetic, Meteorological and Seismological Observatory. From 1920 to 1927 he studied mining engineering at Delft University in the Netherlands. Among his teachers were H.A. Brouwer and G.A.F. Molengraaff. Van Bemmelen became PhD in 1927 with a study on the geology of the Cordillera Bética. He took courses in volcanology at Naples and then worked with the geological survey in the Dutch East Indies, where he mapped parts of Java and Sumatra. From 1933 to 1935 he studied pedology at the Technical University of Vienna. After that he went back to Java to continue his research there. His main interest was in volcanology (magmas and pyroclastic rocks), structural geology and tectonics.

He was able to observe the 1930's serious activity of Mount Merapi from the volcanological post at Babadan on the north west slope.

When the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies in World War II Van Bemmelen and his wife spent three years in a prisoners camp. With the end of the war they moved to the Netherlands, where they lived in The Hague. The Dutch government assigned to Van Bemmelen the job to recollect all information on the geology of the Indonesian Archipelago lost in the war. In 1949 he published a book The Geology of Indonesia, just after Indonesia's independence. Van Bemmelen then spent a year as assistant of S.G. Trooster at Utrecht University and then worked for Shell as a consultant.

In 1950 Van Bemmelen became a part-time professor at Utrecht University. Together with M.G. Rutten he started research on the volcanology and paleomagnetism of Iceland.

Van Bemmelen is known for his theories on orogeny and his ideas of accumulation of terranes to form continents. In his book Mountain Building he postulated his undation theory on orogeny and continents. The mechanism behind orogeny had, according to Van Bemmelen, to be found in the mantle. Due to geochemical differentiation slight differences in density could occur in the mantle, which would lead to vertical flow in the mantle. This vertical flow would result in active tectonics in the Earths crust.

Though not altogether incorrect, his ideas had to be adjusted with the common acceptance of plate tectonics as the mechanism behind continental drift around 1960. In 1972 Van Bemmelen's book Geodynamic Models was published, in which he integrated his own ideas in plate tectonics.

Van Bemmelen retired in 1969, after the death of his wife in 1983 he moved to Austria, where he died shortly after. After his death a controversial TV series was made about his role in the euthanasia of his wife.

[edit] Sources

W.J.M. van der Linden: in Memoriam: Rein van Bemmelen, in 'Geologie en Mijnbouw' Vol 63 No. 1 (1984)
P. Marks: Honderd jaar geologisch onderwijs aan de Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht