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Einar Naumann- August Thienemann Medals

"De limnologia optime merito"

.... and the founders of `SIL' (1922- Societas Internationalis Limnologiae (SIL) or the International Association of Theoretical and Applied Limnology), Einar Naumann and August Thienemann ......

This award is the highest honour that can be bestowed internationally for outstanding scientific contributions to limnology!

Web page of the Soil & Water Conservation Society of Metro Halifax (SWCSMH)

July 02, 2015      

Contents:

 History
 Naumann Medal recipients
 Naumann-Thienemann Medal recipients

History

The medal originated as the Einar Naumann Medal in 1939 (see listing of recipients at the end). The important contributions of August Thienemann to the development and leadership of SIL were fully appreciated later, and in 1972, at the 50th anniversary of the SIL, a decision was made to alter the medal to recognize the different, but fundamental and reinforcing, contributions of both scientists to international limnology.

Einar Christian Leonard Naumann (1891-1934) studied at the University of Lund in southern Sweden. He established an Institute of Limnology at the University of Lund in 1929, when he assumed the chair of professor of limnology. Over a period of 23 years, Naumann produced 297 publications, including several books, such as the major work in 1931 Limnologische Terminologie.

August Friedrich Thienemann (1882-1960) trained in Innsbruck, Heidelberg, and Greifswald. In 1917, he was appointed director of the Hydrobiological Anstalt at Plön, then of the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gesellschaft (which later became the world famous Max-Planck-Gesellschaft), and professor of hydrobiology at the University of Kiel. Over a 57-year period, he published 460 publications, which included several major monographs, particularly on the chironomids and regional comparative limnology. His published discussions in 1914 of the interactions between the different communities and conditions in the water environment into a "super-organismic unity" anticipated the ecosystem concept. It should also be noted that Thienemann developed and published in 1926, the basic conceptual foundations of cycling of nutrients in water and food cycle relationships among producers, consumers, and decomposers.

Both scientists had been organizing biological and abiotic differences among lakes which resulted in a fusion of Thienemann's primarily regional (Subalpine-Baltic) lake types based on profundal fauna and oxygen distributions with the primarily trophic lake types of Naumann based on water chemistry and primary production of phytoplankton. The coupling of these properties with trophogenic and tropholytic zone relationships led to the oligo-, eu-, and dystrophic scheme still used today. Lake typology in the 1920s and 1930s was a catalyst for extensive regional limnological research that amalgamated various subdisciplines of lake studies into limnology.

Both Naumann and particularly Thienemann were also active in applying limnological understanding to applied problems of deteriorating water resources. His missionary statements more than 40 years ago about, for example, the importance of water quality, need for ecological and biological understanding and training among technicians and engineers, rigorous and enforced environmental laws, ecosystem drainage basin management of natural waters, and the importance of experimental scientific research as the foundation of good management are totally applicable and resounding today.

Naumann Medal recipients

Naumann-Thienemann Medal recipients

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