Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie

History

Up to 1878, geological and mineralogical collections formed part of "s Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke Historie'

Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

The Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie was a museum in Leiden, The Netherlands. It was founded in 1820 by Royal Decree, formed from a merger of several existing collections. This happened at the instigation of Coenraad Jacob Temminck, who saw the museum primarily as a research institute...

, the National Museum of Natural History.
This museum, founded in 1820 and established at Leiden, was closely linked with the University there. One of the staff members used to be in charge of the geological collections.

K. Martin (1878-1922)

Proposed by the then director of the Natural History Museum

Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

, H. Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel

Hermann Schlegel was a German ornithologist and herpetologist.-Early life and education:Schlegel was born at Altenburg, the son of a brassfounder. His father collected butterflies, which stimulated Schlegel's interest in natural history...

, K. Martin, a young German geologist, was appointed as ordinary professor of geology at the Leiden University in 1877. In 1878, Martin was also put in charge of the geological and mineralogical collections, which continued to be housed in the Natural History Museum. Under Martin's directorate the collections steadily grew, while increasing in scope and scientific importance. From 1881 onward, most of the fossils collected by the mining engineers of the Mining Survey of the Netherlands East Indies were sent to Leiden for examination by Martin.

Martin's interests were also aroused by the West Indies. During a field trip in 1884-1885 he managed
to make extensive collections, comprising well over 800 specimens, in Aruba,
Curaçao and Bonaire as well as in Surinam and Venezuela. The second journey Martin was able to undertake led to the Moluccas in the East Indies. Here again Martin succeeded in collecting much material. According to the entry in the Museum's list of acquisitions for 1892, he brought
home a collection of 1063 specimens.

A number of collections have come to the Museum by means of exchange. The material offered in exchange consisted in most cases of duplicates from the Java Tertiary

Tertiary

The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...

. In this way the RGM was enriched with series of fossils from Australia, Great Britain, Bosnia, Maryland, Paris Basin, and other regions. Apart from these means of extending the RGM collections, Martin managed to buy several important ones: one from the Philippines, collected by C. Semper

Carl Semper

Carl Gottfried Semper was a German ethnologist and animal ecologist. He achieved a Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Würzburg in 1856. He traveled to the Philippines and Palau two years later, staying in the region until 1865 in association with Museum Godeffroy...

and another one from Java and
Madura.

Moving into a new building at the Van der Werffpark/Garenmarkt in 1893 meant a great step forward. The RGM thus became completely independent and was no longer regarded as part of the Natural History Museum.

B.G. Escher (1922-1955)

In 1922 Martin was succeeded by B.G. Escher. Under his responsibility the Museum collections continued growing. Under Escher's guidance field work was started in the porphyry

Porphyry (geology)

Porphyry is a variety of igneous rock consisting of large-grained crystals, such as feldspar or quartz, dispersed in a fine-grained feldspathic matrix or groundmass. The larger crystals are called phenocrysts...

district near Lugano; soon afterwards in the Bergamasc Alps in northern Italy, and later also more in the south, in the Apennines and Turin Hills. Most samples and specimens collected during excursions with students were stored in the Museum. All these activities accumulated European material; Escher led excursions
to Switzerland and Italy; staff members also to 'classical' regions in Germany, France and England.

After the Second World war the areas where Leiden students did their field work became more varied, and this meant also more variety in the collections brought to the Museum. In the first place may be
mentioned the Netherlands itself, which until the war had not attracted many students. Most of them still went farther afield: Sweden (Dalsland), France (Pyrenees, Belledonne), Switzerland (southern Alps), Spain (Cantabrian Mountains and Galicia), Morocco and even Surinam. Investigations in these areas led to numerous publications, and in many cases the samples described were stored in the RGM.

In 1946 A. Brouwer was promoted to a curatorship in charge of the palaeontological department. He augmented the collections from the Netherlands concerning the Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

mammalian remains. Brouwer followed an active policy in gaining material by buying representative collections from amateur geologists when opportunity and money permitted, and by going out on collecting trips himself.

Meanwhile, mammalian fossils kept coming in. They include two important collections: that of A. B. van Deinse containing cetacean remains, i.a. from the eastern part of the Netherlands, at first on loan, later permanently deposited in the RGM; and a large amount of fossils from the type locality of the Tiglian., the 'Steyl' collection, assigned to the RGM by the Minister of Education, Arts and Science.

I.M. Van der Vlerk (1955-1961)

Van der Vlerk succeeded Escher, who retired in 1955. Owing to his efforts the collection of the late J. H. F. Umbgrove was purchased. It contained — apart from much other valuable material — a large number of fossils from the Upper Cretaceous of southern Limburg and as such was a very desirable and important addition. Two more cases are worth mentioning: a donation of some 1500 erratics by the Geological Museum of Wageningen University

Wageningen University

Wageningen University and Research Centre is a Dutch public university in Wageningen, The Netherlands. It consists of Wageningen University, the Van Hall-Larenstein School of Higher Professional Education, and the former agricultural research institutes of the Dutch Ministry of Agriculture...

, and a gift from the 'Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij' consisting of c. 250 cores from borings in various parts of the Netherlands. Van der Vlerk resigned early 1961.

C. Beets (1963-1977)

After his retirement P. C. Zwaan became acting director followed by C. Beets who was appointed director of the RGM in 1963. Beets set himself to the task of making the RGM not only in name but also de facto the Dutch national geological museum and centre of research. He could put his plans into practice after the removal to the Hooglandse Kerkgracht in 1966.

Intensive collecting campaigns were taken up, for instance in the eastern part of the Netherlands from Tertiary

Tertiary

The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...

deposits of the Winterswijk-Almelo region; in the southern part from the continental Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

of Tegelen; in Italy from Neogene

Neogene

The Neogene is a geologic period and system in the International Commission on Stratigraphy Geologic Timescale starting 23.03 ± 0.05 million years ago and ending 2.588 million years ago...

fissure fillings in Gargano. Apart from these campaigns, Museum staff members went all over Europe on collecting trips or further afield: Canada, U.S.A., Jamaica, El Salvador, Algeria, Rhodesia, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and Australia.

In this period the RGM received much valuable material from other sources as well. To name a few important additions: Fossils and samples from numerous borings in the eastern part of the Netherlands, donated by the 'Nederlandse Aardolie Maatschappij'. Hundreds of ore and rock samples from Billiton and many other parts of the world, and about 1000 drilling samples from the Mbeya carbonatite

Carbonatite

Carbonatites are intrusive or extrusive igneous rocks defined by mineralogic composition consisting of greater than 50 percent carbonate minerals. Carbonatites may be confused with marble, and may require geochemical verification....

of Tanzania, donated by the 'Billiton Maatschappij'. Some 6300 samples and about 5000 thin sections of sedimentary and crystalline rocks of the Oman Mountains, donated by the 'Shell Internationale Petroleum Maatschappij', The Hague.
The collection of the late R. Lagaaij, containing thousands of bryozoan samples from all parts of the world, together with his extensive library. A comprehensive collection of fossils and rock specimens (a.o. that of Molengraaff's Borneo expedition 1893/94) from the Geological Institute of Groningen University. A large collection of fossils, notably foraminifera

Foraminifera

The Foraminifera , or forams for short, are a large group of amoeboid protists which are among the commonest plankton species. They have reticulating pseudopods, fine strands of cytoplasm that branch and merge to form a dynamic net...

and rudists

Rudists

Rudists are a group of box, tube or ring shaped marine heterodont bivalves that arose during the Jurassic, and became so diverse during the Cretaceous that they were major reef-building organisms in the Tethys Ocean.- Shell description :...

, and rock specimens from the Cretaceous

Cretaceous

The Cretaceous , derived from the Latin "creta" , usually abbreviated K for its German translation Kreide , is a geologic period and system from circa to million years ago. In the geologic timescale, the Cretaceous follows the Jurassic period and is followed by the Paleogene period of the...

and Tertiary

Tertiary

The Tertiary is a deprecated term for a geologic period 65 million to 2.6 million years ago. The Tertiary covered the time span between the superseded Secondary period and the Quaternary...

of Jamaica, from the Geological Institute of the University of Amsterdam.
Many thesis collections, presented by the Geological Institute of Leiden University.
The collection of H.M.E. Schürmann (in part): Precambrian

Precambrian

The Precambrian is the name which describes the large span of time in Earth's history before the current Phanerozoic Eon, and is a Supereon divided into several eons of the geologic time scale...

rocks of the Eastern Desert, Egypt.

Beets resigned in 1977 and was followed by P.C. Zwaan as acting director.

The Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie merged in 1984 with the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie

into what eventually became Naturalis

Naturalis

Naturalis is the national natural history museum of the Netherlands, based in Leiden. It originated from the merger of the Rijksmuseum van Natuurlijke Historie and the Rijksmuseum van Geologie en Mineralogie in 1984. In 1986 it was decided that the museum had to become a public museum and a new...

History

K. Martin (1878-1922)

B.G. Escher (1922-1955)

I.M. Van der Vlerk (1955-1961)

C. Beets (1963-1977)

Further reading