Albrecht Penck

Albrecht Penck (1858 to 1945) was a German geographer and geologist who shaped the study of landforms and ice ages in central Europe. Born near Leipzig, he held a professorship in Vienna from 1885 to 1906 and then in Berlin from 1906 to 1927, where he also directed the Institute and Museum for Oceanography. He devoted himself to geomorphology and climatology and raised the international standing of the Vienna school of physical geography. With Eduard Brückner he wrote Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter, which identified four ice ages of the European Pleistocene and named them Günz, Mindel, Riss and Würm after river valleys. He saw his son Walther Penck work on morphological analysis into print after the son died, and was elected to several national academies. His later writing on political geography is criticised for supporting German expansionism during the First World War.