Ivan Gams – karstologist

Academician Ivan Gams is Slovenia's best known researcher of karst and the most prolific author of works on karst. During his first job at the Institute of Geography of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, he started researching the karst surface and underground. He published several in-depth publications on karst caves, the most well-known being the studies of the shaft Triglavsko brezno in the 1960's. Right from the beginning, he focused on issues to which he then dedicated more or less his whole life − and which were also widely recognized by professional public both at home and abroad −, namely corrosion intensity determined by the hardness of water and the discharges of karst rivers and springs, and the method of limestone tablets. Within the geomorphology of karst, Gams was mostly dealing with the karst polje, especially its definition and evolution.