Albrecht Penck. Portrait of Albrecht Penck (1858- 1945), German physical geographer. Penck studied the European ice ages and climate variation. He coined the term geomorphology to describe the scientific study of the origins of landforms. He was the first to study extensively the causes and effects of geographical features. Much of Penck's later work was on the nature and extent of Germany and the development of F. Ratzel's theory of lebensraum (living space) which related the geographical features of an area to the population size it could support.