Albrecht Penck

Albrecht Penck (1858 to 1945) was a German geographer and geologist, born in Reudnitz near Leipzig and the father of the geomorphologist Walther Penck. He was a university professor in Vienna from 1885 to 1906 and in Berlin from 1906 to 1927, where he also directed the Institute and Museum for Oceanography, and he raised the international profile of the Vienna school of physical geography through his work on geomorphology and climatology. With Eduard Brückner he wrote Die Alpen im Eiszeitalter, which identified the four Pleistocene ice ages of the Alps, Gunz, Mindel, Riss and Würm, named after river valleys. He received the Founders Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 1914 and was a member of several foreign academies. His political geography after 1914, which promoted Lebensraum and kulturboden ideas later taken up by German nationalism, has been strongly criticized.