Ernst Håkan Kranck (1898-1989)

Résumé

Ernst Håkan Kranck, professor of geology at McGill University from 1948 to 1969, who died in late May 1989 at the age of 90, was a man whose achievements outran his public recognition because of his innate modesty. ... McGill University invited him to come to Canada as visiting professor in 1948, and McGill managed to hold on to him until his retirement in 1969. ... Håkan Kranck's record of field expeditions is impressive. His first was as a 19-year-old student member of an expedition to Urjanchai on the boundary between Siberia and Mongolia (now called the Tannu-Tuva Republic). That was in 1917, and the expedition became as much a study of the Russian 1917 revolution as of the geology of the region. In 1979 he published an account of that trip, entitled Den Stora Urjanchai-Expeditionen 1917, which deserves, even for its humour alone, to be translated into English. ... Next came field work in Lappland to investigate iron ores. ... His Canadian field work began in 1925, a geological mapping at Steep Rock Lake, Ontario. In 1928-29 he was working in Patagonia, on an expedition sponsored by the Geographical Society of Finland, .... In 1934 he was on field work in Scotland. In 1937 he was a member of the Tanner Finnish Expedition to Labrador and was again in Labrador in 1939. ... After many field trips to Lappland and Finland between 1941 and 1944, and similar work in Switzerland (1945-46), he came back to northern Canada in 1947 to work along the east coast of Hudson Bay in freight canoes, on a grant from the Arctic Institute of North America. [Following expeditions led him to return to Labrador, Baffin Bay, and northern Newfoundland.] ... During this very active life, Håkan Kranck produced three books and numerous scientific papers; he also made many friends, most of whom he outlived.