Fred Ruhe
Well-known member
Dear SAPE members,
It is with great sadness that I have to inform you of the passing of the German paleornithologist and geologist Peter Ballmann (*13th June 1941 in Reichenberg, †1st August 2023 Cologne). He was aged 82.
Peter Ballmann grew up in Germany and Columbia. He studied Paleontology/Geology at the Universities of Munich, Berlin, Tübingen (all Germany) and Leiden (The Netherlands). In 1966 he finished his PhD at the University of Munich about the early Miocene bird fauna from the locality Wintershof-West in Bavaria (Southern Germany). Most of his scientific articles dealt with Miocene or Pleistocene bird faunas from several famous European sites (e.g. La Grive (France), Gargano (Italy)) from where he described more than 25 new bird taxa.
Although he started working in the early 1970ies as a prospecting geologist/pedologist for a petroleum company (if I remember that well) he continued publishing on fossil birds throughout the 1970ies until the early 1980ies.
In the frame of his geological job he worked and lived in several countries and regions all over the world: Ivory Coast (1971), Costa Rica (1973-1974), Saudi Arabia (1981–1984) and Eswatini (former Swasiland) (1985). After his retirement, he made a few more publications in the 2000s about Miocene birds from the “Nördlinger Ries” (Germany), in the last of which I had the pleasure to collaborate intensively with him.
During our collaboration, I have experienced that Peter Ballmann was highly educated and spoke a minimum of six languages fluently (among them English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Russian and even Latin); if I remember well he spoke some more languages, but he didn’t consider them to be fluent.
He was a very good anatomist (osteology and myology) and affected through some of his early publications the osteological terminology and standardized measuring of bird bones, that we still all use.
I was informed about Peter Ballmann’s demise through a letter from this family, but which came only with a postal address (no email-address).
In the name of the SAPE I will send our condolences to his family.
Peter Ballmann will be entombed in Cologne the 24th of August.
Kind regards,
Ursula
(SAPE president)
It is with great sadness that I have to inform you of the passing of the German paleornithologist and geologist Peter Ballmann (*13th June 1941 in Reichenberg, †1st August 2023 Cologne). He was aged 82.
Peter Ballmann grew up in Germany and Columbia. He studied Paleontology/Geology at the Universities of Munich, Berlin, Tübingen (all Germany) and Leiden (The Netherlands). In 1966 he finished his PhD at the University of Munich about the early Miocene bird fauna from the locality Wintershof-West in Bavaria (Southern Germany). Most of his scientific articles dealt with Miocene or Pleistocene bird faunas from several famous European sites (e.g. La Grive (France), Gargano (Italy)) from where he described more than 25 new bird taxa.
Although he started working in the early 1970ies as a prospecting geologist/pedologist for a petroleum company (if I remember that well) he continued publishing on fossil birds throughout the 1970ies until the early 1980ies.
In the frame of his geological job he worked and lived in several countries and regions all over the world: Ivory Coast (1971), Costa Rica (1973-1974), Saudi Arabia (1981–1984) and Eswatini (former Swasiland) (1985). After his retirement, he made a few more publications in the 2000s about Miocene birds from the “Nördlinger Ries” (Germany), in the last of which I had the pleasure to collaborate intensively with him.
During our collaboration, I have experienced that Peter Ballmann was highly educated and spoke a minimum of six languages fluently (among them English, Spanish, Dutch, French, Russian and even Latin); if I remember well he spoke some more languages, but he didn’t consider them to be fluent.
He was a very good anatomist (osteology and myology) and affected through some of his early publications the osteological terminology and standardized measuring of bird bones, that we still all use.
I was informed about Peter Ballmann’s demise through a letter from this family, but which came only with a postal address (no email-address).
In the name of the SAPE I will send our condolences to his family.
Peter Ballmann will be entombed in Cologne the 24th of August.
Kind regards,
Ursula
(SAPE president)
