Editorial Type:
Article Category: Research Article
| Online Publication Date: 05 Nov 2007
Lauge Koch: Pioneer Geo-Explorer of Greenland's Far North
Lauge Koch: Pioneer Geo-Explorer of Greenland's Far North
Page Range: 130 – 153
Lauge Koch, Danish explorer, geologist, and cartographer, became a legendary figure in his lifetime. He was also a very controversial one. For 50 years he was concerned with Greenland affairs, spending 33 summers and 6 winters in the far north, making a profound impact on Greenland geo-science. He was a pioneer in regional map-making and in the use of aircraft in photogrammetric surveys. Koch was a colourful personality of international fame, a man of boundless energy, who-strangely as it may seem-perhaps made in his home country as many enemies as he had admirers. Internationally, he is best known for his continuous work along the east coast between 1926 and 1958 as initiator and leader of expeditions that mapped the vast mountainous terrain of the East Greenland Caledonian fold belt. The results represent an outstanding co-ordinated effort of many international scientists. In contrast, Koch's earlier contribution, the topographical and geological mapping of northern Greenland from Baffin Bay to the Greenland Sea, is much more the work of one man. The results, accomplished primarily by dog-sledge and under particularly harsh conditions, are a mammoth achievement of regional map making unsurpassed in polar history, and one initiated long before the national commitment for regional mapping had taken shape.
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