Abstract

TOSELLI, Alejandro J  and  ROSSI, Juana N. Alfred W. Stelzner: why only three years in Argentina?. Ser. correl. geol. [online]. 2008, n.24, pp.91-102. ISSN 1666-9479.

Alfred Wilhelm Stelzner arrives to Córdoba at April 6, 1871, to assume its contract of Mineralogy profesor in the National Academy of Sciences in Córdoba. Stelzner was one of the eight young and distinguished professors that came to be taken charge of to organize and to open the way in the scientific investigation from our territory to proposal of Germán Burmeister, being designated by the president of the Republic, Don Domingo F. Sarmiento, inside a project of modification of the teaching in the "National University of San Carlos in Córdova." The hired professors should use their time, apart from the educational activity, in carrying out trips for the country to investigate the natural resources of the Estados del Plata, and the varied wealth of the susceptible underground of use. Then they should make know the results of their studies in wider circles, by means of the bulletin and records of the academy. A. Stelzner begins with great enthusiasm its activities of basic recognition of a practically unexplored territory for the scientific investigation and in little time they come the light its concepts of "Pampinen Sierres" and of the "Anticordillera", as well as the description of such minerals as: famatinite, beryl, triplite, apatite and other minerals; together with the first geologic profiles and regional maps of the Sierra of Córdoba and of San Luis, as of the north of the República Argentina. But Scientific Director's position that G. Burmeister showed, granted him great ingerencia on the activities of its subordinates, what motivated little of arriving hard confrontations with the scientific ones and especially with A. Stelzner, when taking direct behavior on the different collections, in the dictation of the classes, in the contralor of the results of the expeditions and the obligation of publishing the results of the studies in the "Bulletin and Actas of the Academy" that were observed and questioned difficultly by this director. This produced a serious institutional crisis that took to cessations and renouncements that practically paralyzed the scientific activity of the National Academy of Sciences. This motivated the renouncement of A. Stelzner to their position and the early return to Germany June 2 1874, after hardly 3 years of their arrival, to act as professor of the Real Academy of Mining of Freiberg, where it published their work of more important synthesis on the Argentina geology, titled Beitrage zur Geologie und Palaeontologie der Argentinische Republik.

Keywords : Alfred Stelzner; Academia Nacional de Ciencias; Universidad Nacional de Córdoba.

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