Karl von Seebach

Karl Albert Ludwig von Seebach (1839 to 1880) was a German geologist known for his studies in volcanology, born in Weimar and died in Göttingen. He studied geology and paleontology at Breslau as a pupil of Ferdinand von Roemer, with whom he made a scientific journey to Russia, and also studied at Göttingen and Berlin, where he was a student of Heinrich Ernst Beyrich. In 1862 he obtained his doctorate at Göttingen with a thesis on the conch fauna of the Weimar Triassic, and in 1870 he became a full professor there and the first director of the geological-palaeontological institute. His earlier research dealt with stratigraphical geology and paleontology, and he devoted much time to a geological chart of the Kingdom of Hanover. In 1864 he travelled to Central America to investigate its volcanic phenomena, and in 1866 he watched eruptions in the Kameni islands of the Santorini caldera. The mineral seebachite is named for him.