Martin Gerard Rutten (22 October 1910 – 13 October 1970) was a Dutch geologist, paleontologist, and biologist. He worked as a professor of geology at the universities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Rutten was born in Jombang, Indonesia to geologist Louis Martin Robert and biologist Johanna Catharina Pekelharing. He joined the Dutch Youth Association for Nature Study and took an early interest in birds and published briefly on birds observed during his later travels. Like his father, who was a geologist in the oil industry, he took an interest in geology and natural history travelling around the world. He studied at the

University of Utrecht Utrecht University (UU; nl, Universiteit Utrecht, formerly ''Rijksuniversiteit Utrecht'') is a public research university in Utrecht, Netherlands. Established , it is one of the oldest universities in the Netherlands. In 2018, it had an enrollme ...

, receiving a bachelor's degree in 1929, a master's degree in 1933, and a doctorate in 1936 on the geology of the

Santa Clara Province Santa Clara (also known as Las Villas after 1940) was a historical province of Cuba and its capital was Santa Clara. After 1976, its territory was divided into the modern Cuban provinces of Villa Clara, Cienfuegos and Sancti Spíritus Sancti ...

in Cuba supervised by his father. He examined

foraminifera Foraminifera (; Latin for "hole bearers"; informally called "forams") are single-celled organisms, members of a phylum or class of amoeboid protists characterized by streaming granular Ectoplasm (cell biology), ectoplasm for catching food and ot ...

and Rudistidae. Like his father, he too joined the

Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij Bataafse Petroleum Maatschappij or Bataafsche Petroleum Maatschappij (colloquially known as BPM), Dutch for ''Batavian Oil Company'', was the Dutch East Indies and later Indonesian subsidiary of Royal Dutch Shell oil company established in 1907. ...

in Indonesia during which time he continued to work on fossil foraminifera in the family Orbitoididae, publishing the work in 1941. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

he returned to work at Utrecht. At the end of the war he worked as a relief team director in the British controlled part of Germany which helped improve his command of English. He returned to teach geology at the University of Amsterdam. In 1951 he moved to the University of Utrecht. He served as a visiting professor at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Among Rutten's contributions was the use of

paleomagnetism Paleomagnetism (or palaeomagnetismsee ), is the study of magnetic fields recorded in rocks, sediment, or archeological materials. Geophysicists who specialize in paleomagnetism are called ''paleomagnetists.'' Certain magnetic minerals in rock ...

as an indicator of changes in the position of the land and as a means of examining age. He also hypothesized that the Icelandic table mountains of basalt were formed by lava flows under an ice sheet. He wrote on the

uniformitarian Uniformitarianism, also known as the Doctrine of Uniformity or the Uniformitarian Principle, is the assumption that the same natural laws and processes that operate in our present-day scientific observations have always operated in the universe in ...

view of geological processes (which he called actualism) and the evolution of life. He noted that the processes were the same over geological time but the environmental conditions may have varied to cause differences in the visible effects. Like A. I. Oparin, he supported the view that life forms came before the oxygenation of the atmosphere. His last book, ''The Origin of Life by Natural Causes'' was published posthumously in 1971.

References

External links

University of Utrecht page with portrait and brief information in Dutch
{{DEFAULTSORT:Rutten, Martin Gerard 1910 births 1970 deaths Dutch geologists Utrecht University alumni Academic staff of Utrecht University