Professor Karel Absolon Dead
Authors: Kettner Radim 
Published: February 2024

PhDr. Karel Absolon, professor at the Charles University in Prague, an outstanding natural historian and praehistorian died in Brno on October 6, 1960. He was born on June 16, 1877 in Boskovice, Moravia. He was deeply interested in speleological investigations of which he took active part, for the first time, in the Moravian Karst in 1897. In 1903 he graduated at the Czech University in Prague and became doctor of philosophy. In 1907 he was appointed private docent in physical geography at the same university. In 1908 he became custodian of zoological collections in the Moravian Museum in Brno where he founded a separate departement containing rich diluvial findings. He had given up his work at the museum shortly before he retired. In 1926 he was appointed unpaid assistant, and in 1927 unpaid professor of geography, with special regard to palaeoanthropology and zoogeography. In Brno he lived until his death and wrote his numerous scientific works. In his speleological investigations he was at first interested in zoology. Later he was attracted by numerous morphological problems in our karst, especially the Moravian Karst, as well as the karst of Dinarian Mountains. He was the greatest expert of karst morphology and zoology of the Moravian Karst, where he made his best speleological investigations. He started in the Sloup Caves, Holštýn ponors "V Rasovnách", the Emperor's Cave and in several other in the whole area of the Moravian Karst. The most difficult task of the problem of Macocha Chasm, was to find some way that would lead to its bottom. After several discoveries, Absolon finally succeeded in reaching its floor through the Punkva Caves in January, 1914. Absolon's greatest achievement (1933) was to find access to the Macocha Chasm from the surface by boat. Extraordinary success he achieved in his explorations of the Dinarian Mountains, Yougoslavia, where upon an area of 60 000 km2 he studied the geomorphological development of individual poljes and caves, and solved a series of complicated problems in karst hydrography. He compiled 62 detailed maps of this region, in scale of 1 : 75 000. He also occupied himself with the problem of the hydrography of the Ombla and Timavo rivers. He discovered many new genera of cave fauna most of which he described in different zoological magazines. Praehistory was another scientific branch in which Professor Absolon took interest. His archaeological investigations made Moravia famous as the second largest (after France) European area inhabited in the past by the Pleistocaene man. His works present a detailed documentation of localities, displaying pictures of the rich findings, especially of the Aurignacian culture of the Palaeolithic man. As a result of these explorations he compiled a palaeoethnological atlas which comprises about 20 000 pictures. It has remained an only document depicting the findings since the findings themselves were destroyed in 1945 in the course of war operations in the Mikulov Castle, Southern Moravia. Professor Absolon wrote many works about speleological problems of the Moravian Karst, and it rests a voluminous work on the Moravian Karst called "The Macocha Chasm and the Subterranean River Punkva in the Devonian Limestones of the Drahany Plateau, Moravia", which is due to be issued by the Academy of Sciences, Prague. Worth mentioning are also his works on the Dinarian Karst. In Professor Karel Absolon Czechoslovakia lost one of its greatest scientist of extraordinary knowledge in several scientific branches, known and highly estimated also abroad. His name will for ever remain combined with Czech natural sciences, geography and praehistory.