Portal:Volcanoes/Selected biography/3

Reinout Willem van Bemmelen (April 14, 1904-November 19, 1983) was a Dutch geologist. His main interest was in volcanology (magmas and pyroclastic rocks), structural geology and tectonics, especially sliding tectonics.

Rein van Bemmelen spent his youth in the Dutch East Indies, where his father Willem van Bemmelen was the director of the Magnetic, Meteorological and Seismological Observatory. From 1920 to 1927 he studied mining engineering at Delft University. He was able to observe the 1930s activity of Mount Merapi from the volcanological post at Babadan on the north west slope. When the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies in World War II Van Bemmelen and his wife spent three years in a prisoners camp.

It was during that time that he published the 1941 issue of the Netherlands East Indian Volcanological Suvey. With the end of the war they moved to the Netherlands, where the Dutch government assigned to Van Bemmelen the job to recollect all information on the geology of the Indonesian Archipelago. In 1950 Van Bemmelen became a professor at Utrecht University. Together with M.G. Rutten he started research on the volcanology and paleomagnetism of Iceland. He supervised seven doctoral dissertations on the tectonics of the Italian Alps and several dissertations on hydrology.