AASP Primary Records Program

AASP Newsletter 27(4): p. 9-10, 1994.

GERHARD OTTO WILHELM KREMP
1913 - 1994

Gerhard Kremp was born November 14, 1913, in Berlin, Germany. He earned a Diploma in 1937 at Teachers College in Cottbus, and pursued graduate study at the University of Berlin until January, 1940, when he was drafted into the German military where he served until the end of the war. However, he was granted leave of absence during this time to finish his studies.

In February, 1940, Gerhard Kremp was married to Eva Magdalene Agahd. In 1945 he earned his Doctor Rerum Naturalis from the University of Posen where his dissertation, entitled Die Flora des Braunkohlenlagers von Konin an der Warthe auf Grund der Pollenfuehrung, was supervised by Professor Paul W. Thomson. He served as an Assistant Professor at the Geological Institute of the University of Gottingen from 1945 to 1947.

In 1947 Kremp began work as Research Assistant at the recently founded "Amt fuer Bodenforschung von Nordrhein-Westfalen" (later changed to "Geologisches Landesamt", or State Geological Survey) at Liblar, subsequently being transferred to Herne in 1948, and to Krefeld in 1950. He joined the group working on Carboniferous stratigraphy, concentrating on the coal-bearing deposits of the Ruhr region and neighboring basins, and undertook the task of establishing a stratigraphic subdivisions within the Carboniferous based on the distribution of megaspores, microspores, ostracodes, foraminifera, etc.). With the help of one full-time technician, and some help from a secretary and a second technician shared with the coal petrographers, he produced a number of publications. The publication he co-authored with Robert Potonie in 1955-1956, Die Sporae Dispersae des Ruhrkarbons I-III, is still regarded as the standard for palynostratigraphy of the Ruhr Carboniferous.

In 1955 Kremp emigrated with his family to the United States to work at Pennsylvania State University in the coal petrography laboratory of William Spackman, who was organizing a program to study the uraniferous lignites of South Dakota with support from an Atomic Energy Commission grant. At Penn State Kremp supervised graduate assistants, and with Spackman established in 1956 the Catalog of Fossil Spores and Pollen which they initially co-edited with H. Tate Ames and Hilde Grebe.

In 1959-1960 Kremp was employed as a palynologist at the U.S. Geological Survey in Denver, Colorado. Effective October 1, 1960, he accepted the position of Associate Professor in Geochronology and Geology at the University of Arizona in Tucson, specializing in stratigraphic palynology. In 1962 Kremp, along with Professor Terah Smiley, co-hosted the First International Pollen Congress in Tucson, the first of the international conferences later organized and now regularly held under the auspices of the International Federation of Palynological Societies (IFPS).

Among Kremp's 148 publications are numbered two books: his Morphological Encyclopedia of Palynology: An International Collection of Definitions and Illustrations of Spores and Pollen published in 1965, and The Spores of the Pteridophytes Illustrations of the Spores of the Ferns and Fern Allies, published in 1972 in collaboration with T. Kawasaki. The encyclopedia was translated into several languages, and has been reprinted several times.

In 1965 Kremp began seeking oil industry support on behalf of a project to place the world's palynological literature in a computer datafile, which he hoped would ultimately be available to the entire palynological community. He hoped that the nomenclatural information to be contained therein would help palynology avoid the taxonomic chaos which he feared could result from the erection of duplicate names by palynologists working with inadequate reference libraries, and which had afflicted some other microfossils disciplines. His tireless efforts were rewarded when the support materialized and the Kremp Palynological Computer Research Project (now Palynodata, Inc.) became a reality in 1968. The datafile now contains all of the information on the nomenclature, stratigraphic occurrence, and geographic location of each microfossil reported in nearly 18,000 pre-Pleistocene palynological publications. Kremp retired from the University of Arizona as Professor Emeritus on December 31, 1978, to devote full time to his work on Palynodata and the Paleo Data Banks series which he produced.

Among his many honors are included his receipt of the Gunnar Erdtman International Medal of Palynology awarded by the Palynological Society of India in 1970, and his listings in Leaders in American Science, Dictionary of International Biography, and Personalities of the West and Midwest.

Gerhard and Eva Kremp are the parents of three children: Eva (Kremp) Smith; Peter Kremp, DDS; and Sabine (Kremp) Weil. Their shared talent and love for music was evident in their enthusiastic participation in their church's choir and musical programs. To all who knew him Gerhard was a loving and devoted family man; and his kindness, grace, enthusiasm, energy, and deep involvement in palynology were obvious to all those around him. He was an inspiration to his many professional colleagues and graduate students.

Gerhard Kremp passed away on Thursday, August 18, 1994 at 80 years of age.

Prepared by Ken Piel with assistance from Eva Kremp, Owen Davis, Hilde Greve, Jake Gerhard, and Norm Frederiksen.

PALYNOS 17(2): p. 5-6, 1994.

Dr. Gerhard Otto Wilhelm Kremp, an internationally known and admired paleopalynologist, passed away on August 18, 1994, at his home in Tucson, Arizona.

He was born on November 14, 1913, in Berlin, Germany. Both his secondary and undergraduate education were in Berlin, culminating in 1937 with a degree in education from Humboldt University. He then accepted a graduate assistantship in geology in the laboratory of Professor Paul Thomson at the University of Poznan. Here he undertook a palynological research problem on the Konin lignites of the Warta River Basin. However, his studies were interrupted by the onset of World War II and in 1939 he was drafted into the German Army.

After the war was over (1945), he received a two-year appointment as a research assistant in the Geological Institute of the University of Gottingen, which enabled him to complete his doctoral dissertation that he had begun eight years earlier at Poznan. Because Poznan had become part of Poland after the war, the University of Gottingen accepted his credits and awarded him the degree of Dr. rer. nat. in Geology in 1945.

From 1948 to 1954 he was employed as palynologist in the Geologisches Landesamt (Geological Survey) of Nordrhein-Westfalen located at Krefeld, West Germany. The Director of the Coal Geology and Paleobotany Division of this organization at that time was the famous Dr. Robert Potonié, one of the principal founders of the science of paleopalynology. After examining Kremps sizable collection of slides and photomicrographs of spores and gymnospermous pollen extracted from coal seams of Upper Carboniferous age in northwestern Germany, Potonié proposed that they collaborate on the systematics and description of this material. This cooperative endeavor resulted in a series of publications that are well-known to all paleopalynologists--Potonie and Kremps Die Sporae dispersae des Ruhrkarbons that appeared in three issues of PALAFONTOGRAPHICA in 1955-56. It was here that the authors proposed a new set of suprageneric form genera, viz., Abteilung, Turma, and Anteturma, as the foundation for their morphographic system of classification for Paleozoic palynomorphs.

In 1955 the Kremp family emigrated to the United States where Dr. Kremp accepted an appointment as a senior research associate in the coal petrographical laboratory of Dr. William Spackman at the Pennsylvania State University. In 1957 Dr. Kremp edited (with H. Tate Ames and Hilde Grebe) the first volumes of the Catalog of Fossil Spores and Pollen, a systematic compendium of original descriptions and illustrations of palynomorphs of all ages. This important reference work (flow consisting of 43 volumes) can be found in the laboratories of most palynologists today.

During 1959-60 Dr. Kremp was employed as a palynologist at the Denver Branch of the U.S. Geological Survey; later that year he was appointed as an Associate Professor of Geochronology in the Department of Geosciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Almost immediately he began planning an international meeting of palynologists, together with his colleagues Lucy Cranwell, Jane Gray, Edwin Kurtz, Paul Martin and Terah Smiley. Accordingly, the first International Palynological Conference was held at the University of Arizona on April 23-27, 1962. Dr. Kremp was the program chairman for this pioneering conference that attracted almost 250 palynologists from all parts of the world. This highly successful meeting served as a model for the seven quadrennial International Palynological Congresses that have taken place to date.

Dr. Kremp's Morphologic Encyclopedia of Palynology (first published in 1965 by the University of Arizona Press) is an important illustrated glossary of the terms used in palynology. This book has gone through several printings and has been translated into several languages, including German and Russian. In 1972 he co-authored, with Dr. T. Kawasaki, The Spores of the Pteridophytes which illustrated a wide range of fern spore types.

As a result of his concern about the rapid proliferation of palynologic literature, Dr. Kremp and several oil companies founded the Paleo Data Bank under the imprimatur PALYNODATA in 1977. He continued to develop this significant literature data bank service for palynologists from his home after his retirement with the rank of Professor Emeritus from the University of Arizona in 1978.

Dr. Kremp belonged to the several scientific societies, including the: American Association of Stratigraphic Palynologists (AASP), American Paleontological Society, Botanical Society of America, International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT), Commission Internationale de Microflore due Paleozoique (CIMP), and the Palynological Society of India. He was honored in 1966 with the Gunnar Erdtman Medal for Palynology by the Palynological Society of India.

On a personal note, I will always be indebted to Gerhard for his warm friendship over the past 30 years, as well as his willingness to serve on the graduate committees of a number of my former students at Arizona State University.

Dr. Kremp is survived by his loving wife, Eva (nee Agahd), their three children, Eva Smith, Peter Kremp and Sabine Weil and seven grandchildren, whose presence he enjoyed immensely. His family, colleagues and many friends will miss him.

James E. Canright
President, IFPS