BERENDT, GOTTLIEB MICHAEL

BERENDT, GOTTLIEB MICHAEL (1836–1920), German geologist. Berendt was born in Berlin, where he studied mining geology. The results of his early field work in the Berlin area were published in his first major book Die Diluvialablagerungen der Mark Brandenburg (1863). This research made him an ardent protagonist of the new, and at the time controversial, glacial theory, for which he adduced additional evidence by a study of the Harz Mountains. In 1873 he was appointed professor at the University of Koenigsberg, and in 1875 professor at the University of Berlin. He was one of the first Jews to join the Prussian Geological Survey, where he directed the department for the North German Lowlands. Berendt engaged in extensive geological mapping, particularly of glaciated areas. His geological map of the province of Brandenburg was the first of its kind. Notwithstanding his open mind on modern geological theory, he was an opponent of Darwin whose theory of evolution he tried to refute in Die Theorie Darwins und die Geologie (1870). -BIBLIOGRAPHY: NDB, 2 (1955), 69–70. (Yakov K. Bentor)