THE ICING ON THE CAKE – GLACIOLOGY IN EUROPE AND AMERICA: FRANK LEVERETT’S YEAR ABROAD WITH PENCK, BRUCKNER, AND OTHER GLACIOLOGISTS

In 1910, Frank Leverett published a curious monograph entitled “Comparison of North American and European glacial deposits” in Zeitschrift fur Gletscherkunde. For Leverett, it was an unusual publication for several reasons. Up to that time, almost all of Leverett’s field work was conducted in the United States and Canada. Such a publication would seem presumptuous from another less meticulous scientist.

Although Leverett’s contributions to American glaciology are widely known, it is less widely recognized that he spent the year of 1908 in Europe studying glacial geomorphology and stratigraphy in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechoslovakia, Holland, along the Baltic and in the British Isles.

Leverett’s Field Notebooks 219-226 provide a wealth of information about this extraordinary year. Leverett writes about the lectures he attended in Berlin and field trips throughout the countryside. He also records his measurements and descriptions of various glacial features. Leverett even notes his impressions about the lands and people he was encountering. In the summer, Leverett went on field trips with Penck, Bruckner, Keilhack, Wahnshaffe, Credner, Klautzch, Davis and others. His travels included both older Pleistocene glacial shorelines and features as well as modern Alpine glaciers. In all probability, after more than 20 years in the field tracking ancient American glaciers, the first glacier Leverett actually saw was on one of these field trips into the Alps.

This year-long collaboration between Leverett and the European glaciologists allowed him to compare American field methodologies and geomorphic features, as well as stratigraphic classification schemes, with their European counterparts.