Jökull - 01.01.2004, Blaðsíða 108

handrit að bókinni tveimur vikum áður en hann lést.
Kemur þetta rit, sem ber nafnið „Jarðhitabók – eðli og
nýting auðlindar“, út hjá Hinu íslenska bókmenntafé-
lagi snemma árs 2005.
Guðmundur var hæverskur maður og barst ekki
mikið á. Hann var athugull og rólegur en gat verið
fastur fyrir ef á þurfti að halda. Sem stjórnandi forð-
aðist hann að ofstýra en gaf starfsmönnum sínum jafn-
an mikið svigrúm og sjálfstæði sem stuðlaði að því að
mynda frjótt rannsóknaumhverfi á Jarðhitadeild.
Guðmundur var kunnur skákmaður á yngri árum
og keppti m.a. á Ólympíumótum í Amsterdam árið
1954, München árið 1958 og Havana árið 1964.
Guðmundur kvæntist 21. júlí 1956 Ólöfu B. Jóns-
dóttur, sjúkraliða, f. 24. sept. 1930 á Teygingalæk í
V-Skaftafellssýslu. Þau eignuðust tvo syni, Magnús
Atla, kerfisfræðing og Jón Pálma, viðskiptafræðing.
—– —– —– —– —– —–
Guðmundur Pálmason, one of the pioneers of geother-
mal research and geosciences in Iceland, passed away
on 11 March 2004.
Guðmundur graduated in technical physics from
Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm 1955 and
received M.Sc. degree from Purdue University in In-
diana, USA. In 1971 he defended his D.Sc. thesis in
geophysics at the University of Iceland.
In 1955, Guðmundur joined the small geother-
mal team at the State Electricity Authority in Iceland,
under the supervision of the late Dr. Gunnar Böð-
varsson. A year later the Geothermal Division was
formed, which was to become the Geothermal Divi-
sion of Orkustofnun (Iceland’s National Energy Au-
thority) in 1967. In 2003, the Geothermal Division
was transformed into the ÍSOR, the Iceland GeoSur-
vey.
Guðmundur Pálmason became director of the
Geothermal Division in 1964, and was to hold this
position until he retired in 1997. Under Guðmundur’s
management, the Geothermal Division grew from a
small workplace with a few employees to a group of
over 40 experts involved in almost all the geoscience
and engineering disciplines related to the exploration
and utilisation of geothermal resources.
Guðmundur soon became an internationally
renowned geoscientist, partly because of his contri-
bution to geothermal research and partly because of
his activity in crustal research in Iceland and on the
Mid-Atlantic Ridge. His D.Sc. thesis was a pioneer-
ing work involving a comprehensive study of the Ice-
landic crust by explosion seismology. In the 1970s
he developed a kinematic model of rifting and crustal
formation on mid-ocean ridges, with special applica-
tion to the geology of Iceland. This model offered an
explanation for many geological observations in Ice-
land and ont the mid-ocean ridges. He was also active
in heat flow studies and gravity mapping of Iceland.
Guðmundur was an active member of the interna-
tional geothermal and geoscience community. He was
leader of the Icelandic delegations to the UN geother-
mal conferences held in Pisa in 1970 and in San Fran-
cisco in 1975. He served as a geothermal consultant
for UN agencies in El Salvador, Mali, North Korea,
Philippines, and Taiwan. He was a member of the
Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences,
chairman of an international working group on the
Earth’s rift systems, a member of the ESF consor-
tium of the Ocean Drilling Program, and a member
of AGU. Guðmundur was, furthermore, actively in-
volved in the IUGG and the International Heat Flow
Committee and a member of the Board of Directors
of the Nordic Volcanological Institute. He was also
one of the architects of the International Geothermal
Association, serving on its first Board of Directors.
He was Chairman of the Technical Programme Com-
mittee that organised the World Geothermal Congress
held in Florence in 1995, and was elected the first
President of the Geothermal Association of Iceland in
the year 2000.
After his retirement in 1997 he wrote a book in
Icelandic that was to cover all aspects of geothermal
energy in Iceland: its nature, exploration, utilisation
and history. He completed the manuscript only two
weeks before his death.
Guðmundur is survived by his wife, Ólöf
Jónsdóttir, and two sons.
Ólafur G. Flóvenz
108 JÖKULL No. 54, 2004