When Fritz Machatschek died on 9 September 1957 the world lost a distinguished glaciologist. Born in Wischau of the old Empire, in 1876, he obtained his doctor’s degree at Vienna under Penck, his thesis being based on climatological investigations on the glaciers of the Sonnblick group in the Central Alps. In 1905 he qualified for residence in Vienna as a university lecturer, with his thesis on the morphology of the Jurassic in the Swiss Jura.
In 1915 he became Professor of Geography in Prague; in 1924 he moved to Zürich and in 1925 he went back to Vienna. In 1935 he finally took up residence in Munich. Thus his activities were spread over many of the classic seats of glaciological research. His particular interest was in geomorphology and in this way he came into close touch with glaciology itself. His small, comprehensive book Gletscherkunde, which was published in Leipzig in 1902 as part of the Göschen Collection and reprinted in 1917, was wholly excellent. In it he covered the glaciers from the points of view of both geographers and geologists in an unusually clear and easily understood manner.
His change from Vienna to Munich in 1935 was very advantageous for his research work, for he succeeded the well-known polar scientist, Professor Erich von Drygalski. Together with the latter he rewrote his small book of 1902, Gletscherkunde, changing it into the big volume of the same name in the Encyclopedia of Geography, published in 1942 by F. Deuticke in Vienna. In this work the physics of glacial research and of ice is covered, in addition to the temperatures, structure and distribution of the glaciers in many parts of the world. A work was thus brought into being which, in spite of the rapid progress of glaciological knowledge, has not lost its basic value.
Machatschek was a master in the field of geomorphology, which in so many respects is very close to glaciology; among his many important writings his standard work, Geomorphologie, stands supreme and is now in its sixth edition.
R. Finsterwalder
