Richard Vollenweider: some reminiscences from the 1950s

摘要

It may have been in 1949 or 1950 when Richard Vollenweider travelled Lake Constance in order to visit his colleague, Julius Grim, at the Institute of Lake Research in Langenargen. Both of them were phycologists, not taxonomists, but analysts with a general view of the lake as an ecosystem and of the fate of the algae under changing conditions. It had been found that the phytoplankton composition, the spectrum of the species in the lake, was changing: was it a matter of fluctuations, or was there a trend hiding behind the phenomenon? The lakes in Switzerland were a bit ahead in terms of eutrophication and Richard Vollenweider brought this message to his German colleagues, which immediately fired Julius Grim's imagination. But of course one could not anticipate the key role of phosphorous in this matter, least of all predict the picture which would only become clear 20 years later. Richard Vollenweider, however, was on the right track. What he was looking for was evidence. I, myself, as an accidental visitor at the institute, listened to the discussion, and was fascinated by the two very clever gentlemen.