Fritz Loewe filling a weather balloon . Source : Fritz Loewe Collection , University of Melbourne Archives ( image : 1988.0160.00115 ).

Before the establishment of AMOS or its predecessor , the Australian Branch of the Royal Meteorological Society , there were monthly Joint Meteorological Colloquia in Melbourne convened by CSIRO , the Bureau of Meteorology and local university staff . Fifty years ago ( November 1970 ) the speaker was Fritz Loewe giving a talk honouring the great meteorologist Alfred Wegener . The content of the lecture was contained in the December 1970 issue of the Australian Meteorological Magazine .

Born in Berlin in 1895 , Loewe originally qualified as a physical education teacher before studying meteorology . From 1925 to

1928 he led the aeroplane branch of the Prussian Meteorological Institute , then moved to the German weather service , at Tempelhof Airport , Berlin . As a Jew , he was persecuted in Nazi Germany . In1934 , he fled with his family to England . At the Scott Polar Institute in Cambridge , he met Sir Raymond Priestley , vicechancellor of the University of Melbourne , who invited him to establish Australia ’ s first department of meteorology at the University of Melbourne in 1939 .

After the start of World War II Loewe was initially classified as an ‘ enemy alien ’ before being invited to use his aviation meteorology expertise to train RAAF navigators and forecasters under the new category of ‘ refugee alien ’. He became an Australian citizen in 1944 .

After the war he made several research expeditions to Antarctica , including wintering in Terre Adélie in 1950 – 51 . There he drew up a detailed mass balance of the Antarctic ice-sheet . In 1960 , he retired as senior lecturer-in-charge but continued to spend time at the university until his death in 1974 .

Fritz Loewe ’ s connection to Alfred Wegener was close and personal . In 1930 , Loewe joined Wegener ’ s fourth expedition to Greenland . The aim was to establish three permanent stations from which the thickness of the Greenland ice sheet could be measured and year-round Arctic weather observations made . One camp , Eismitte (“ mid-ice ”), was located on the ice sheet near the geographical centre of Greenland at an elevation of around 3000 metres . On a journey to transfer provisions to this camp for three men to winter there , weather conditions were adverse with temperatures as low as – 60 ^o C . Most of the party returned to the West camp leaving a small group including Wegener and Loewe to supply the camp . Loewe ' s toes became so frostbitten they had to be amputated by penknife without an anesthetic . Wegener and a companion left the camp to return to the West camp but they did not survive . Wegener ’ s marked grave was found the following year . He had apparently died from a heart attack and been buried by his companion . The body of his colleague was never found . In the absence of Wegener , Fritz Loewe became the acting expedition leader and later worked with Wegener ’ s widow to publish an account of the expedition .

In his talk to the Joint Colloquium , Loewe covered the many areas of research to which Wegener contributed . He mentioned some of his adventurous exploits in meteorological research such as setting a then world duration record of 52 hours for a balloon flight with his brother Kurt when based at the Aeronautical Observatory near Berlin . Other research areas were upper air measurements in high polar latitudes , the study of snow drift , seismic measurements of the thickness of the ice sheets and