Erich Dagobert von Drygalski

Erich Dagobert von Drygalski was born on 9 February 1865 in Knigsberg, East Prussia. He was educated at the universities of Knigsberg, Bonn, Leipzig and Berlin, before working as an assistant at the Institute of Geodesy at Potsdam.

In 1891, he undertook a preliminary expedition to West Greenland sponsored by the Gesellschaft fr Erdkunde zu Berlin to select a suitable site for a major study of the motion of the Greenland ice cape in preparation for the German glaciological expedition, 1892-1893 (leader Erich von Drygalski). The results were published in a two-volume work in 1897.

In 1899, he was appointed professor of geography and geophysics at the University of Berlin, and the following year was selected to lead the German South Polar Expedition, 1901-1903. The expedition ship Gauss was beset and wintered in the pack ice about 80 kilometres off the Wilhelm II Coast. Expedition members were confined to small-scale local studies of sea ice, marine biology and the nunatak Gaussberg, their nearest point of land. The results of the expedition were published between 1905 and 1931 in twenty volumes with supplementary atlases under the collective title Deutsche Sdpolar-Expedition 1901-1903.

In 1906, Drygalski was appointed professor of geography at the University of Munich, a post he held until his retirement in 1934. In 1910, he participated in the German Preliminary Airship Expedition to Svalbard (leaders Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin and Heinrich Prinz von Preussen), conducting a study of the glaciations of Spitsbergen. During the First World War, he served as a battalion commander in Belgium. After the war, he became interested in political and anthropological geography, travelling extensively in Siberia, Europe, Asia and North America. He died on 10 January 1949 in Munich.

Published work, Grnland-Expedition der Gesellschaft fr Erdkunde zu Berlin 1891-1893 by Erich von Drygalski, W.H. Khl, Berlin (1897) SPRI Library Shelf (38)91(08)[1891-1893], Deutsche Sdpolar-Expedition 1901-1903 im Auftrage des Reichministeriums des Innern by Erich Dagobert von Drygalski and others, Walter de Gruyter & Co. Berlin (1921-1931) SPRI Library Shelf (7)91(08)[1901-1903 Drygalski]

From the guide to the Erich von Drygalski collection, 1900-1933, (Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge)