Dams Wilhelm Barnim

(09.06.1843 - 22.12.1898)

German paleontologist and geologist.

Born in Stolpa. His father served as appellate judge in Wroclaw.

Wilhelm Dams attended there since 1858 Maria Magdalen High School. After graduating from school in 1864, he studied at the universities of Berlin and Ferdinand von Remer in Wroclaw, where he received his doctorate in 1868. In 1871, Dams was an assistant at the Museum of Geology and Paleontology, University of Berlin. After undergoing a habilitation in 1874, he became an assistant professor at Humboldt University in Berlin.

In 1891, William was appointed professor of geology and paleontology.

In 1881, 1884, 1890 Dams visited Sweden. He wrote various essays about his scientific findings, including Geological Travel Notes from Sweden. Together with Emanuel Kayser, a professor of paleontology and geology at the University of Marburg, he published in 1881 "Periodic Paleontological Tracts". The themes of his publications were mainly fossil vertebrates, glacial deposits on the North German Plain, as well as studies on trilobites and echinids (sea urchins). They appeared in the journal of the German Geological Society, as treatises and special reports of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, of which he had been a member since 1892, and in the New Yearbook of Mineralogy. In the paleontological literature one can find the name William (Barnim) Dams again and again, especially in connection with the primitive bird Archeopteryx.

As the first German geologist, Dams supported the theory of the internal ice of Otto Martin Torell. He also acquired special merits as the head of the Geological Museum in Berlin. The Wilhelm Dams private library was acquired in 1899 by the library of Berlin Humboldt University a year after its untimely death.

From 1882 to 1897, he was with Emanuel Kaiser, editor of palaeontological treatises.

He died in Berlin.

A small open bay (Damesbukta) on the north coast of the inner part of the Van Miyen fjord in the south of Nordenskiöld Land . Coordinates 77º  51.5'N    16º  29.5'E.

Morena length of 7 km in the extreme south of Nordenskjold Land. Coordinates 77º  51.8'N    16 º 33'E.