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Professor Dr. Karl Otto Münnich
(1. 1. 1925 – 26. 10. 2003)
It has been more than 25 years since the last Annual Report on the scientific work in our
Institute. We, thus, want to take this opportunity to commemorate Karl Otto Münnich,
the founding father and first Director of the Institut für Umweltphysik (Environmental
Physics), to whom we dedicate this report.
Karl Otto Münnich was born and grew up in Heidelberg. He studied Physics at the
University of Heidelberg and received his doctoral degree in 1957. During his PhD work
he established the Radiocarbon Dating Laboratory in Heidelberg which later became
part of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften (Academy of Sciences). Karl
Otto Münnich quickly realised the universal significance of the Radiocarbon method
far beyond its application in archaeology. As one of the first topics, together with John
C. Vogel, he pioneered the ground water dating method. Also during the 1950s and 60s
Münnich became witness of the dramatic consequences of atmospheric nuclear weapon
testing on radionuclide concentrations in the environment. He was among the first
to utilise this “global tracer experiment” and study exchange processes between the
important compartments of the climate system, therewith establishing the new research
field of Environmental Physics. After a sabbatical in the US and a directorate at the
Forschungszentrum Jülich, Karl Otto Münnich was appointed director of the newly
founded Institut für Umweltphysik (Institute for Environmental Physics) in 1974. Here
he demonstrated a unique combination of abstract thinking in terms of fundamental
physics, experimental skills, and interdisciplinary insight. His excellent sense to extract
the pivotal points of the often highly complex processes in nature permitted him to
elaborate fundamental, but still simple solutions in a variety of fields. He was an
excellent and adored teacher, colleague and friend to many of us. Karl Otto Münnich
attracted a large number of students, and his work became well established world-wide
with many of his alumni now teaching this discipline themselves.
Today the various methods originally introduced by Karl Otto Münnich are applied to
all major environmental subsystems, where physics plays the central role for process
understanding. At the Heidelberg Institute his pioneering ideas have been well implemented
and are successfully pursued. The 2005 Scientific Report nicely illustrates how
we endeavour to carry Karl Otto Münnich’s early visions into the future.