Lennart von Post

Ernst Jakob Lennart von Post (16June 188411January 1951) was a Swedish naturalist and geologist. He was the first to publish quantitative analysis of pollen and is counted as one of the founders of palynology. He was a professor at Stockholm University 1929–1950.

Lennart von Post was born in Johannesberg, near Västerås in Västmanland County, Sweden. He was the son of Carl Fabian Axel von Post (1849 1927) and Beata Jacqueline Charlotta Christina (1852 1885). Von Post was an only child. His father served in the Swedish Army as a judge advocate but also worked as a civilian lawyer, farmer and assistant cantonal judge.

Von Post studied geology at Uppsala University from 1902 to 1907, eventually obtaining his licentiat degree. At Uppsala he learned from lecturers such as A. G. Högbom, who developed the concept of the geochemical carbon cycle and Rutger Sernander, of the Blytt Sernander Pleistocene sequence. Von Post began working on a history of the development of the Mästermyr marsh on Gotland with Jakob Ljungqvist in 1902.

Von Post worked for the Swedish Geological Survey for 21 years as a peat specialist. During this time he developed the technique of using pollen grains to build stratigraphies that could be used to correlate peat layers locally. By 1916, along with work by (Gustav?) Lagerheim for N. O. Holst, the concept of using pollen to describe immigration of plant species and changes in the relative numbers of plants took hold. Regardless, von Post was highly influential, working with palynologists including Gunnar Erdtman, Knut Fægri and others. It is notable however that conflict between Erdtman and von Post led to Erdtman's relative obscurity in academia for a number of years. Von Post's proposed outlet, named Svea River, was never fully accepted with alternative theories for the origin of the canyon being proposed. Notably Astrid Cleve Euler proposed in 1946 the canyon was formed by subglacial drainage of a lake. At the time of his death in 1951 von Post was preparing a large study on Klarälven which was left unfinished.