İhsan Ketin (10 April 1914 – 16 December 1995) was a Turkish

earth scientist Earth science or geoscience includes all fields of natural science related to the planet Earth. This is a branch of science dealing with the physical, chemical, and biological complex constitutions and synergistic linkages of Earth's four spheres ...

Early years

He was born in 1914 in the Central Anatolian town of

Kayseri Kayseri () is a large List of cities in Turkey, city in Central Anatolia, Turkey, and the capital of Kayseri Province, Kayseri province. Historically known as Caesarea (Mazaca), Caesarea, it has been the historical capital of Cappadocia since anc ...

, located at the foothills of Mt. Aergus (the volcano Erciyes). He won a state scholarship to study

natural science Natural science or empirical science is one of the branches of science concerned with the description, understanding and prediction of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer ...

s abroad, as part of

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk Mustafa Kemal Atatürk ( 1881 – 10 November 1938) was a Turkish field marshal and revolutionary statesman who was the founding father of the Republic of Turkey, serving as its first President of Turkey, president from 1923 until Death an ...

's plans of modernizing the newly formed

Republic of Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

. He started his undergraduate studies in Natural Sciences at

Berlin University The Humboldt University of Berlin (, abbreviated HU Berlin) is a public research university in the central borough of Mitte in Berlin, Germany. The university was established by Frederick William III on the initiative of Wilhelm von Humboldt ...

in 1934, and subsequently completed his doctorate at

Bonn University The University of Bonn, officially the Rhenish Friedrich Wilhelm University of Bonn (), is a public research university in Bonn, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It was founded in its present form as the () on 18 October 1818 by Frederick Will ...

in 1938 under the supervision of Hans Cloos, thus becoming the first native of Turkey with a

doctorate degree A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

in geology in the Republic of Turkey. Ketin returned to Turkey in 1938, and started his career as

assistant professor Assistant professor is an academic rank just below the rank of an associate professor used in universities or colleges, mainly in the United States, Canada, Japan, and South Korea. Overview This position is generally taken after earning a doct ...

at the Geological Institute of

Istanbul Technical University Istanbul Technical University, also known as Technical University of Istanbul (, commonly referred to as İTÜ), is an public university, public technical university located in Istanbul, Turkey. It is the world's third-oldest technical university ...

Scientific career

Through a faithful coincidence, the long-dormant

North Anatolian fault The North Anatolian Fault (NAF; ) is an active right-lateral strike-slip fault in northern Anatolia, and is the transform boundary between the Eurasian plate and the Anatolian sub-plate. The fault extends westward from a junction with the Ea ...

awoke to activity, first gently with the Tercan quake of 21 November 1939, but then violently with the great Erzincan catastrophe of 28 and 29 December 1939, which claimed the lives of some 32.000 people. Ketin rushed to the field with many other geologists, Turkish and foreign, to map the surface breaks and the fearful damage. After Ketin published his paper on the

, its importance was acknowledged when he was awarded the coveted Gustav-Steinmann-Medaille, the highest distinction the Geologische Vereinigung e.V. gives, in the journal, in which Ketin's paper had been published.Yaltirak C.; Aksu A.E., 2002, Memorial to Ihsan Ketin (1914–1995), Marine Geology, Volume 190, Number 1, 15 October 2002, pp. 1–3(3) Sengor, A.M.C. (1989) Professor Ihsan Ketin: An appreciation. In: Sengor, A.M.C. (Ed.), Tectonic Evolution of the Tethyan Region. Kluwer Academic Publishers, London, p.xxxi-xxxvi. In 1953, Ketin accepted a new position, the chair in General Geology in the Faculty of Mines at Istanbul Technical University. In 1953, he published his well-known comparison of the San Andreas and North Anatolian faults. Ketin contributed four major papers to the International Tectonic Map of Europe, published in 1960, in which he portrays Turkey as a dominantly asymmetric

orogen An orogenic belt, orogen, or mobile belt, is a zone of Earth's crust affected by orogeny. An orogenic belt develops when a continental plate crumples and is uplifted to form one or more mountain ranges; this involves a series of geological proc ...

, accreted from north to south. His tectonic and kinematic views formed the basis for many large-scale tectonic models in Turkey. Ketin retired from active teaching in 1983, but remained in the Department of Geology as

professor emeritus ''Emeritus/Emerita'' () is an honorary title granted to someone who retirement, retires from a position of distinction, most commonly an academic faculty position, but is allowed to continue using the previous title, as in "professor emeritus". ...

until his death in 1995. Ketin had an enormous memory capability. As Celal Sengör, one of his students, said he was a hafiz able to reciting all Koran verses in Arabic and Turkish.

Publications

Selected publications of Ihsan Ketin * 1940, ''Über die Tektonik und den Vulkanismus der Gegend von

Bad Bertrich Bad Bertrich is an '' Ortsgemeinde'' – a municipality belonging to a ''Verbandsgemeinde'', a kind of collective municipality – in the Cochem-Zell district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It belongs to the ''Verbandsgemeinde'' of Ulmen, wh ...

'' (

inaugural dissertation A doctorate (from Latin ''doctor'', meaning "teacher") or doctoral degree is a postgraduate academic degree awarded by universities and some other educational institutions, derived from the ancient formalism '' licentia docendi'' ("licence to teach ...

). Jahrb. Reichsstelle Bodenforsch. 60, 49–98. * 1946, ''Geologische Untersuchungen auf der Halbinsel Kapıdağ und Inseln im Marmara Meer, Türkei''. Istanbul Univ. Fak. Mecm. B XI, 69–83. * 1948, ''Über die tektonisch-mechanischen Folgerungen aus den grossen anatolischen Erdbeben des letzten Dezenniums''. Geol. Rundsch. 36, 77–83. * 1954 (with Roesli, F.), ''Makroseismische Untersuchungen über das nordwestanatolische Erdbeben vom 18 März 1953''. Eclogae Geol. Helv. 46, 187–208. * 1956, ''On the geology of

Yozgat Yozgat is a city in the Central Anatolia Region of Turkey. It is the seat of Yozgat Province and Yozgat District.Kırşehir Kırşehir, historically known as Mocissus or Mokissos () and Justinianopolis () in ancient times, is a city in Turkey. It is the seat of Kırşehir Province and Kırşehir District.Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

)''. Min. Res. Explor. Inst. Turkey (MTA) Bull. 66, 23–34. * 1969, ''Über die nordanatolische Horizontalverschiebung''. Min. Res. Explor. Inst. Turkey (MTA) Bull. 72, 1–28. * 1976, ''San Andreas ve Kuzey Anadolu Fayları arasında bir karşılaştırma (A comparison between the San Andreas and the North Anatolian faults)''. Geol. Soc. Turkey Bull. 19, 149–154. * 1980 (with Şengör, A.M.C. and Yılmaz, Y.), ''Remnants of pre-late jurassic ocean in northern Turkey: fragments of Permian-Triassic Paleo Tethys.'' Geol. Soc. Am. Bull. 91, 599–609. * 1983, ''Türkiye Jeolojisine Genel Bir Bakış''. Istanbul Technical University Publications, Istanbul, 595 pp. * 1984, ''Türkiye’nin bindirmeli ve naplı yapısında yeni gelişmeler ve bir örnek Uludağ Masifi (New developments in the overthrust-nappe tectonics of Turkey with the example of

Uludağ Uludağ (), the ancient Mysian or Bithynian Olympus ( Greek: Όλυμπος), is a mountain in Bursa Province, Turkey, with an elevation of . In Turkish, ''Uludağ'' means "great mountain". In ancient times the range of which it is a part, e ...

massif)''. In: Ercan, T., Ça layan, M.A., Ketin Simpozyumu Feb. 20–21, Geological Society of Turkey, Ankara, pp. 19–36. * 1989 (with Güner, G.) ''Istanbul Bölgesinde Karbonifer yaşlı Trakya Formasyonu’nun yapısal özelliği (Structural peculiarity of the Carboniferous Thracian Formation in the Istanbul area)''. Mühendis. Jeol. Bul. 11, 13–18. * 1995, ''The geological evolution of the volcanic complex of Mt. Erciyes''. In: Güler, O. (Ed.), Antik Çağ Ikonografisinde Erciyes. stanbul Arekoloji ve Sanat Yayınları, pp. 107–115.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ketin, Ihsan 1914 births People from Kayseri Humboldt University of Berlin alumni University of Bonn alumni Turkish geologists Turkish non-fiction writers Academic staff of Istanbul Technical University Recipients of TÜBİTAK Science Award Tectonicists 1995 deaths 20th-century geologists