Ott Christoph Hilgenberg in twentieth-century geophysics

The main points of the life and scientific production of Ott
Christoph Hilgenberg (1896-1976) have been reconstructed. The
events took place between America and Berlin: in America from
1925 to 1928 the young Hilgenberg, with a diploma in Mechanical
Engineering, worked as a Geophysicist in an oil prospecting
company. It was there that he probably developed his interdisciplinary
ideas, which, influenced in various ways by the European
cultural climate, brought him into the field of global tectonics. He
conceived a theory about the expansion of the Earth based on the
nature of the gravity field. In 1933, the theory was published in
his classic work 'Vom wachsenden Erdball'. Upon his return in
Germany he performed various types of research at the School of
Engineering, then that of Geology and Paleontology at the
Technical University of Berlin. He was also briefly involved as
editor of the scientific publications at the Technical University of
Berlin, where he made a contribution towards saving the book
collection as the war ended. During the years spent in Berlin, he
continued to refine his elegant version of the theory of Earth’s
expansion publishing articles and books on this subject up to the
last years in his life. The importance of Hilgenberg lies in the fact
that he marks the beginning of the integration of various scientific
disciplines from Physics to Paleontology and Paleomagnetism, in
support of a universal tectonic theory, and that he made paleogeographic
reconstructions on globes with smaller radii than the present
one. All those who have worked or are working with one of
the versions of expansion tectonics owe him enormous gratitude
for his inspiration and for the scientific and moral lesson of fifty
years spent in unflagging defence of his ideas. The material gathered
and kindly made available by his daughter Helge has been
indispensable for this recalling.