Olaf Holtedahl, 24 June 1885 - 26 August 1975

• Published in: Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: The Royal Society 1976
• Subjects: Arctic; Holtedahl; Kongsberg; Norway
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbm.1976.0008; https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.1976.0008

Professor Dr Philos. Olaf Holtedahl died on 26 August 1975 at the age of 90 years. He was elected a Foreign Member of the Royal Society in 1961. During a long life in the service of science he was a leading personality in Norwegian and Arctic geological research. In Norwegian geology he upheld a long and important tradition which started at the ‘Bergseminar' in Kongsberg 1757—three years before the ‘Bergakademie’ in Freiburg—and continued at the University of Oslo (Kristiania). Here the first professor in ‘rock-sciences, Jens Esmark gave in 1814 his inaugural lecture in geology; he was succeeded by Balthazar Keilhau, a confirmed neptunist who had listened to A. G. Werner's lectures in Germany. Theodor Kjerulf, the next in line, is perhaps the greatest Norwegian geologist in a general traditional sense. He presented the first detailed account of the geology of Southern Norway. In 1890 W. C. Brøgger took over the chair, and was the last of his countrymen to master practically all branches of geology. He started as a zoologist, continued as a palaeontologist, stratigrapher, mineralogist, petrologist and as a student of the Quaternary; regional geology was the only branch to which he made but a minor contribution. After Brøgger’s time the chair in geology was divided into several different fields. Holtedahl gradually became the leading representative of the central tradition, the course shaped by Esmark, Keilhau and Kjerulf.