Alfred Jahn

Alfred Jahn (April 22, 1915, Kleparów, near Lwów (L'viv) – April 1, 1999, Wrocław) was a Polish geographer, geomorphologist, polar explorer and rector of Wrocław University.

He was born on April 22, 1915 in Kleparów, near Lwów (L'viv). He obtained a Masters of Science degree at the Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów in 1937. In the same year he took part in the First Polish West Greenland Expedition, organized by Aleksander Kosiba, which provided him with enough material for his PhD dissertation. Completed in 1939, it had the title "Investigations on the structure and temperature of soils in West Greenland".

Jahn survived the Nazi occupation of Poland by working as a feeder of lice at Rudolf Weigl's typhus research institute in Lwów. After the war he first worked in Lublin, at the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University, and then in the reconstituted Wrocław University (which included a large number of the faculty from Jan Kazimierz University in Lwów who survived the war). In the 1950s he resumed his polar studies, participating in expeditions to Spitsbergen and the Polish Polar Station in Hornsund. He also conducted research in Siberia, Alaska and other parts of Scandinavia which made him one of the foremost polar geomorphologists in the world. He was made president (rector) of Wrocław University in 1962.

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