Aleksis Dreimanis

Who was Aleksis Dreimanis?

Aleksis Dreimanis was a Canadian Quaternary geologist. He was born in Valmiera, Latvia.

He first studied geology at the Institute of Palaeontology at the University of Latvia in Riga. In 1939, he worked as a lecturer at the University. As World War II was being fought, he also took on the responsibility of consulting in Quaternary mapping in the Latvian Institute of Mineral Resources. He was conscripted into the Latvian Legion. After the war Dreimanis was appointed Associate Professor in the Baltic University in the Displaced Persons camps at Hamburg and Pinneberg in Germany.

In 1948, Dreimanis immigrated to Canada to assume a lecturer position at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. Several Canadian institutions called on him for his Quaternary expertise, including the Geological Survey of Canada, the Ontario Department of Mines, and the Ontario Department of Planning and Development for the St. Lawrence Seaway Authority, the Thames River Conservation Authority and various private companies. The university promoted him to Associate Professor in 1956, then to Professor in 1964. In 1980 the university gave made him an Emeritus Professor. In the over 40 years with the university, he has produced over 200 papers, notes and abstracts in the field of Quaternary research.