stanisław baranowski—1935–1978

Stanisław Baranowski, Associate Professor and Head of the Department of Meteorology and Climatology of the University of Wrocław, Poland, died on 27 August 1978 after a prolonged period of incapacity following an unfortunate accident which he suffered in the Antarctic in January of the same year. He had been conducting glaciological investigations in the South Shetland Islands in the vicinity of the Polish H. Arctowski Station, when, in his sleep, he was poisoned by gas escaping from a leaking cylinder. Although he received immediate medical aid at the Polish station as well as at the Argentine town of Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, and in spite of the treatment he underwent at a Buenos Aires hospital and later in Poland, he did not regain consciousness, and passed away nearly eight months after the accident.

Stanisław Baranowski was born on 25 March 1935. In 1955 he graduated from the University of Wrocław where he had been studying under the guidance of Professor A. Kosiba and the author of the present note. He carried out specialized studies in glaciology at the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, and in Tarfala, Sweden, and became an experienced glaciologist by participating in many polar expeditions of which the year-long expedition on Spitsbergen, organized by Professor S. Siedlecki in the International Geophysical Year, 1957−58, was his first. In later years he himself organized and headed numerous Polish expeditions to Spitsbergen sponsored by the University of Wroclaw and the Polish Academy of Sciences. On Spitsbergen as well as in Iceland and in Canada his work was chiefly concerned with glaciers whereas in Poland he conducted climatological and snow-cover investigations in the Sudety Mountains.

He was a man of great abilities, ambition, and inexhaustible energy. Before his life came to such an untimely and tragic end he had written over 50 scientific articles and papers. His last paper: “Glacier and landform features in the Columbia Icefield area, Banff and Jasper National Parks, Alberta, Canada”, written in collaboration with W. E. S. Henoch, appeared while he was still alive but in the coma from which he never emerged.

His last contributions to glaciological research were his papers sent to two glaciological conferences held in August 1978 in Ottawa, the Symposium on Glacier Beds and the Symposium on Dynamics of Large Ice Masses. Their respective titles were “The origin of drumlins as an ice-rock interface problem” and “Some particular features of subpolar glaciers as exemplified by the glaciers of Spitsbergen”.

His achievements in Polar investigations are represented in numerous articles and two large papers—“Termika tundry peryglacjalnej SW Spitsbergen [Thermal conditions of the periglacial tundra in S.W. Spitsbergen]” and “The subpolar glaciers of Spitsbergen seen against the climate of this region”, published as Acta Universitatis Wratislaviensis, No. 68, 1968, and No. 410, 1977, respectively.

Baranowski also analysed the course of the Pleistocene and Holocene glaciation on Spitsbergen. Changes in the rate of ice deformation in the core of this ice cap, brought about mainly by temperature oscillations and resulting in changes in the cap volume, were the effective cause of the shoreline displacement which, in turn, led to the formation of different terraces. He made an attempt to show the changes of the Spitsbergen glaciation together with the probable course of glaciation in the Barents Sea in relation to the evolution sequence of the Scandinavian ice sheet. Baranowski suggested that in the Würm glaciation of the Atlantic sector of the Arctic on the one hand, and in the glaciation of northern and central Europe on the other, there existed a specific metachronism caused by a gradual southward shift of the subpolar barometric trough producing snow-rich cyclones. In the Holocene history of the Spitsbergen glaciation he presented new data documenting a well-developed tundra of the Viking age between two glacier advances.

Baranowski conducted extensive research projects on snow-cover problems and other snow–ice phenomena in the Sudety Mountains. Although these investigations were well advanced, only a few of the results have yet been published.

Because of his remarkable technical skills, Baranowski was able to patent several instruments employed in his work. In order to investigate snow-cover movements more effectively, he designed a special, very original device. He also collaborated in the construction of an automatic meteorological station which is now being manufactured in Poland.

As an active member of the International Glaciological Society he took part in many international conferences dealing with glaciological problems.

Stanisław Baranowski was widely known and universally liked, and it is especially tragic that he died so young and while at the height of his creative powers.

The Wrocław University Research Station in the Werenskioldbre forefield on Hornsund, Spitsbergen, the station which he had founded and where he spent many summer research seasons, has been named after him.

In his honour, too, a commemorative plaque has been put up at the Polish station on King George Island, in the South Shetland Islands, where he suffered his accident.

Alfred Jahn