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DR. ANSELMO [ANSELM] WINDHAUSEN : 1909 - 1920s ORIGINAL MASSIVE ARCHIVE OF PRIMARY, HISTORICAL MANUSCRIPTS, PHOTOGRAPHS, DOCUMENTS AND EPHEMERA BY NOTED GEOLOGIST, GEOGRAPHER AND EXPLORER OF ARGENTINA AND THE SOUTH AMERICAN CONTINENT

On offer is an exceptional, massive, historically significant archive of original handwritten manuscripts, documents, photographs and related ephemera including maps, passports and research materials of noted geographer, geologist, explorer and expert on South America Anselmo Windhausen. Of particular interest to historians and researchers and collectors of the natural history of the continent are 10 original manuscripts: 1. Geologica Argentina; 2. Paleonto Logia I; 3. Geologia Historica Y Sudamericana II; 4. Geologia De Los Combustibles; 5. Nociones de Hidrogeologia; 6. Mineralogia Y Geologia; 7. Geologia General I,II, III, IV; 8. Geografia Fisica I; 9. Accion Coustructiva Y Destructiva Aqua Carrienta; 10. Sierra De Cordoba Hidrogeolica Y Pampeano Cordoba with hundreds of photographs in albums full of exploration photographs and a trip from Argentina to California; across the US in 1915; the Panama Pacific Exposition plus the archive boast hundreds of documents, maps, passports and other ephemera. BIO NOTES: Dr. Anselm Windhausen (1882-1932) Anselm Windhausen was born in Lingen, Germany, on April 20th, 1882. He studied at the Gymnasium Josephinum in Hildesheim and, successively, at the universities of Berlin, Munich and Göttingen, where he had among his teachers such renowned scientists as Ferdinand von Richthofen, Wilhelm Roentgen, Karl von Zittel, Wilhelm von Branca and Adolf von Koenen. He began his scientific work at the Unicorn Cave, in the Harz mountains of Germany, under a scholarship from the Virchow Foundation, conducting geological and paleontological studies whose basic conclusions were confirmed many years later. In those early years, he worked for Göttingen's Geological-Paleontological Institute and the Roemers Museum in Hildesheim. In 1907, he obtained his Ph. D. in Geology at the University of Göttingen and that same year he was appointed to take care of the geological and paleontological collections at the Provincial Museum in Hanover. On April 20th, 1909, when he was turning 27, he was hired by the Mines and Geology Division of Argentina's Ministry of Agriculture as a staff geologist. He moved to Argentina shortly thereafter. His first geological surveys in Argentina where conducted in the southern area of the province of Mendoza between 1909 and 1910. In 1910, he was in charge of organizing the mineralogical collection at the Centennial Exposition in Buenos Aires. Commissioned by the Argentine government, he organized the Mines and Geology Division exhibition at the Industries and Labor Exposition in Turin and Roubaix in 1911, in which he obtained a "Grand prix." Between 1912 and 1913, he began his first explorations in northern Patagonia to investigate the oil outcrops that had been reported in the late 19th century in the Cerro Lotena area of the province of Neuquén. In September of 1913, he recommended the exploitation of oil in what is today the Plaza Huincul field, during a lecture he gave at the Sociedad Científica Argentina in Buenos Aires. (However, the merit of having discovered that oil field was wrongly attributed to one of his superiors, Dr. Hans Keidel, and it wasn't until 1972, some 60 years later, that Windhausen's achievement was finally recognized). In 1916, he resumed his explorations in the areas of Río Negro and Neuquén to define the limits between the Cretaceous and the Jurassic. His conclusions were first published in 1918 in the American Journal of Science. In that study, he established the concept and nomenclature of the so-called 'Jagüel layers'. Subsequently, he extended his expeditions to the area south of Lake Nahuel Huapí, the Chubut River, Puerto Camarones, Puerto Madryn and other parts of Patagonia. He published his research on the Neocomian fauna at the National Academy of Sciences in Córdoba, Argentina, of which he became a member a few years later, in 1922. He maintained important scientific correspondence on the controversy surrounding the theories of Florentino Ameghino with such renowned colleagues as Herman von Ihering, director of the Museo Paulista, and W. D. Matthew, of the American Museum of Natural History. In 1919, he was transferred to the newly-created Dirección General de los Yacimientos Petrolíferos Fiscales, which later became the state-owned oil company YPF. Windhausen was commissioned to conduct a complete geological survey of the oil areas of Chubut and Santa Cruz, whose partial conclusions he published in Argentina and Germany. In 1920, Windhausen took the Argentine citizenship. After a strong argument with the Director of YPF, Col. Enrique Mosconi, about the prospects for the exploitation of Patagonian oil, which he defended against other opinions, he returned to Mines and Geology in 1923. In 1924, he published a landmark geological study of the Bay of San Jorge, which, for decades, was the basis for the exploration and exploitation of oil in that zone of Patagonia. Besides, he brought back to public attention the importance of the Jaramillo Petrified Forest (now known as the Cerro Cuadrado Petrified Forest) in the southern province of Santa Cruz. He sent samples of area fossils (like the " Araucaria mirabilis ") to his German colleague Walter Gothan, a celebrated paleontologist, with a recommendation for further studies in Germany. Windhausen also recommended the exploitation of what was later known as the lignite fields of Río Turbio, and extensively explored the Lake Argentino area of Santa Cruz. In 1923, he cooperated with renowned South African scientist A. du Toit during his visit to Argentina, closely working with him on the geological correlations of Patagonia and Southern Africa. He then published a milestone article titled "El nacimiento de la Patagonia" (The birth of Patagonia), in 1924. In it, he pioneered the idea of using Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift for the study of South American geology. His ideas about the tectonic plates of South America were confirmed some 30 years later with the use of satellite photography. In 1925, as a member of the Argentine Geographical Society (GAEA), he actively cooperated with the expedition of the German oceanographic ship " Meteor, " which mapped the South Atlantic floor with the use of sonar. Along with his brother-in-law, the German topographer Fritz Graef, he co-edited GAEA's scholarly journals. In 1926, he was appointed Geology and Paleontology professor of Graduate Studies at the School of Natural Sciences of the National University of Córdoba. In 1928, the Berlin Geographical Society, in its centennial, granted him the Gustav Nachtigal medal, ex aequo with the noted German geographer Fritz Kühn, for his contributions to Earth Sciences. In 1929, he published the first volume of his landmark work, 'Geología Argentina' (Ed. Peuser, Buenos Aires). Dr. Windhausen working circa 1926. At that time he also worked as a private consultant for the U.S. company Electric Bond and Share Co. for building a dam in Anisacate, Córdoba. He was one of the founders of the Mining and Geology Society of Argentina. He traveled to Germany in late 1929, invited by the famous German geographer Albrecht Penck, to finally receive the Nachtigal medal. In January of 1930, he lectured on " Bau und Bild Patagoniens " at the Society in Berlin, presented by Penck himself.In 1931, he published the second volume of his " Geología Argentina " devoted to regional and historical geology. For decades, the two volumes of this work were an obligatory source for scholars and a textbook on the subject. The book incorporated his visionary application of Wegener's theory of continental drift to the geological interpretation of South America. In April of 1931, through the University of Córdoba, he proposed to YPF the establishment of a scholarship program for students of natural sciences, which benefited several generations of Argentine geologists as of 1932. After making a trip to Southern Patagonia in the summer of 1931-32, he suffered a stroke. Anselm Windhausen died at the German Hospital in Buenos Aires on April 2, 1932, just eighteen days before turning 50. In 1935, a jury of which later Nobel Prize winner Bernardo Houssay was a member, gave him a posthumous National Science Prize for his "Geología Argentina." There are also some early German papers when Dr. Anselmo Windhausen leading up to his taking on the position in Argentina. Overall G+.. Spanish, German, English. Book Condition: Good+

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