| Summary: | Denmark has again lost one of her great Greenland explorers. The distinguished geologist, Alfred Rosenkrantz, professor at the University of Copenhagen and a Fellow of the Arctic Institute since 1950, died on 8 July in Copenhagen. Geology interested him from early childhood. He spent many hours in the Geological Museum of the University of Copenhagen, where years later he taught and did all his research. His father, an official at the court of the King of Denmark, was rather old-fashioned. When the time came for Rosenkrantz to attend the University, he insisted that the young man should study something "sound" - not geology. Rosenkrantz was therefore enrolled at Denmark's Technical Institute, from where he graduated in 1926 with a degree in engineering. While studying he also worked as a research assistant in the Geological Museum and, during the summer months, was a field assistant with the Geological Survey of Denmark. During this period he worked mainly on the Danish Danian and Palaeocene, and despite his youth published several valuable papers on those subjects. No sooner had Rosenkrantz graduated than he became a member of Lauge Koch's 1926-27 expedition to the east coast of Greenland. He investigated the Jurassic of the Scoresbysund area which he revisited in 1929, 1934, 1935 and 1936. In 1930-31 he studied at German universities and was appointed associate professor at the Technical Institute of Denmark. In 1946 he became full professor, and in 1954 was appointed professor at the University of Copenhagen, a position from which he retired in 1966. During the years 1937-66 he also taught geology at the Teachers' College of Denmark. He retired from active field work in Greenland only a couple of years ago. During his first stay in Greenland he - like almost everybody else - became infected by the well-known "Polar bug" varietas groenlandica, and the attack lasted almost 50 years. In 1938, and again in 1939, he raised funds for, and headed, the Danish Nugssuaq expeditions to West Greenland. These two ...
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