Could you keep focusing on your research if war was breaking out around you? The second volume of naturalist Bohumil Shimek begins on 23 July 1914 with him rushing to the Botanical Garden in Halle, Germany just five days before the start of World War I. In his entry that day, he observes a felled oak tree whose growth measurements were linked to major military events as far back as the Westphalian Peace in 1648. Two weeks later, Germany declared war on France. Despite this, Shimek continued his research in central European botany, traveling in Germany and Austria-Hungary Empire until early September. His diary entries carefully note his botanical work along with keen observations of the changes happening around him.
Please help us transcribe the second half of Shimek's diary, written mostly in English with just a little Czech. The first volume is here.
Could you keep focusing on your research if war was breaking out around you? The second volume of naturalist Bohumil Shimek begins on 23 July 1914 with him rushing to the Botanical Garden in Halle, Germany just five days before the start of World War I. In his entry that day, he observes a felled oak tree whose growth measurements were linked to major military events as far back as the Westphalian Peace in 1648. Two weeks later, Germany declared war on France. Despite this, Shimek continued his research in central European botany, traveling in Germany and Austria-Hungary Empire until early September. His diary entries carefully note his botanical work along with keen observations of the changes happening around him.
Please help us transcribe the second half of Shimek's diary, written mostly in English with just a little Czech. The first volume is here.
Bohumil Shimek (1861-1937) studied civil engineering at the State University of Iowa (SUI), where he received a C.E. degree in 1883 and an M.S. degree in 1902. He served as railroad and county surveyor for Johnson County, Iowa, 1883-1885, and taught sciences at Iowa City High School, 1885-1888. From 1888 until 1890, Shimek was an instructor in zoology at the University of Nebraska. From 1890 to 1932, he taught botany at SUI and served as the head of the Department of Botany, 1914-1919. In 1914, Shimek was an exchange professor at Charles University in Prague. Shimek was also Curator of the Herbarium, SUI, 1895-1937; President of the Iowa State Academy of Sciences, 1904-1905; a geologist for the Iowa State Geological Survey, 1908-1929; and Director of the Lakeside Laboratory, Lake Okoboji, Iowa. Shimek's interest in the natural sciences and geology covered many areas, but he was mostly known for his study of loess, loess fossils, and fossil malacology in Iowa and the prairie states. He was the author of the term, Nebraskan, which is used to describe the layer underneath the Aftonian interglacial deposits.
