Ida Valeton

Ida Valeton was born in 1922 in Hamburg, as the first daughter of Ina and Friedrich Meggendorfer. In 1935, after her father had been appointed professor of psychiatry at the Friedrich-Alexander University, the family moved to Erlangen. During World War II, she studied in Erlangen, Munich, and Graz.

After she received her doctorate under the supervision of Franz Heritsch at the University of Graz she began her scientific tenure under the auspices of Carl Wilhelm Correns at the University of Göttingen. From 1948 to 1952 she was the assistant of the geologist Adolf Wurm at the University of Würzburg. Subsequently, she moved to Hamburg with the mandate to establish a laboratory for sediment petrography at the geological state institute of Hamburg (which should later become the geological and paleontological institute of the department of geology at the University of Hamburg). There, she habilitated in 1957 and was appointed the professor in 1964.

In 1963 and 1964 she was visiting professor of the geological institute in Bordeaux. Additional visits abroad lead her to India, Africa, and South America. In summer 1974 she took part in the first expedition of Egon T. Degens to lake Van, where she studied the terrace sediments of the East Anatolian soda lake.

She was an internationally acknowledged expert for bauxite when she retired in 1987.