Rudolf Kaufmann

Studying the Upper Cambrian alum shales in Sweden, Kaufmann found that the trilobite genus Olenus occurred in an unbroken sequence of sediments covering a considerable period of geological time.

He was thereby in a position to track the phylogenetic evolution of Olenus, that is, the rise and fall of species within the genus and the changes in their morphology.

[2] With the 1930s onset of the Nazi regime in Germany, Kaufmann, who was a Jew, was dismissed from his position at Greifswald University.

He found himself ill at ease in Denmark, and after a spell in Italy, he returned to Germany, where, in October 1935, he started teaching at a Jewish school in Coburg, and was arrested on a charge of "Rassenschande" (he was being treated for a sexually transmitted disease acquired from an affair with an "Aryan" woman).

When Lithuania became part of the U.S.S.R. in 1940, he joined the staff of the Geological Survey at Kaunas, immersing himself in the problems of Pleistocene drift, and marrying a fellow refugee.