Charles Lory
Charles Lory (born July 30, 1823 in Nantes , † May 3, 1889 in Grenoble ) was a French geologist, known as a pioneer of Alpine geology.
Life
Lory was an excellent student in Nantes, although he was rather taciturn. He studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure from 1840 to 1843 , received the Agrégation in physics (and three licensed degrees) and was initially professor of physics at the Collège in Grenoble. He wanted to specialize in geology there in the Alps after his teacher Edmond Hébert had interested him in the subject. He wrote his dissertation (written in Poitiers) on the basis of research on the chalk of the Grenoble area and received his doctorate in 1847. In 1846 he became a physics professor at the Lyceum in Besançon , which he stayed for three years until the geology professor Achille Ernest Oscar Joseph Delesse (1817-1881) gave him a position as a substitute for the chair. During this time he explored the French and Swiss Jura , which fascinated him because of its mixture of simplicity, large-scale structures and local complexity. At the same time, they were the mountain regions of France that had been best explored until then and, in contrast to the Alps, which he mainly explored later, were much more easily accessible. In 1849 he succeeded Émile Guyemard (1788-1869) professor of geology at the University of Grenoble. In 1871 he became dean of the Faculty of Natural Sciences.
plant
He explored the French Alps (and other parts of the Alps) and mapped the Isère , Drôme and Hautes-Alpes departments , but also dealt with the area around Geneva. He also found several elongated, sharply delineated large tectonic zones in the Savoy Alps and confirmed views of Alphonse Favre regarding thrusts and the ensuing stratification reversal and doubling.
He also dealt with fossils and stratigraphy of the Cretaceous - especially in the Grenoble area - and the Jura in the Alpine foothills. He was particularly interested in the transition from Jurassic to Chalk. He found that it was continuous and that the retreat of the Jurassic Sea was accompanied by freshwater deposits from large lakes, followed by another marine transgression. He wanted to write a large-scale work on the French Jura and brought in the geologist Pidancet (a student of the pioneer of law research Jules Thurmann ). That turned out to be a big disappointment. Pidancet hardly supported him and instead spread that Lory wanted to rob other geologists of the laurels, which made them desperate before he was called from Besancon to Grenoble, where he wanted to do for the Dauphiné what Thurmann did for the Swiss Jura. In the lower chalk he was able to close the knowledge gap between the layers in Grenoble and those of the Paris basin.
He also made an important contribution to a stratigraphic controversy at that time about coal deposits (anthracite) in the Alps (sandstones with coal from swamps alternated with marine deposits - slate with belemnites). Elie de Beaumont and others wanted to overturn the traditional principles of stratigraphy and paleontology, while Adolphe Brongniart and Charles Lyell insisted on the primacy of paleontological findings. For example, in the Mont-Blanc area, in addition to the crystalline massif in the Chamonix valley, there was a trough-like occurrence of Lias and Triassic sediments, and on the nearby Aiguille rouge there was a horizontal succession of these sediments above the crystalline. Lory explained that the sediments were originally deposited horizontally (as traditional stratigraphy according to Lyell and others demanded), but then the subsoil was broken up by faults and the sediments came to their present-day position through sliding and folding movements.
Lory also advised the city of Grenoble on water supply issues.
In 1877 he became a corresponding member of the Académie des sciences . In 1881 the French Geological Society met in the Alps, not least to discuss Lory's theories.
In 1883 he was President of the French Geological Society and he was an honorary member of the Belgian Geological Society.
Fonts
- Remarques sur les anthracites des Alpes, 1841
- Considérations géologiques sur le mont Salève, et sur les terrains des environs de Genève, 1843
- Observations sur la position relative des terrains des Alpes suisses occidentales et des Alpes de la Savoie, 1847
- Essai sur la geologie des montagnes placées entre la chaîne du Jura et le lac de Genève, 1850
- Mémoire sur les terrains liasique et keupérien de la Savoie, 1859
- Descriptions géologique du Dauphiné, Grenoble, Paris 1860, Mines ParisTech, digitized
- Recherches géologiques dans les parties de la Savoie, du Piémont et de la Suisse voisines du Mont-Blanc, 1867
- H.-B. de Saussure et les Alpes, 1870
- with Eugène Risler: Description géologie du canton de Genève, 1879
- Carte géologique du Dauphiné (Isère, Drôme, Hautes-Alpes), Grenoble 1858, digitized
literature
- J. Gosselet, Etude sur le travaux de Charles Lory, Bull. Soc. Belge Geology 1890, pdf
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Also Jean-Francois-Emile Guyemard, Biographie, Annales des Mines
- ^ List of members since 1666: Letter L. Académie des sciences, accessed on February 16, 2020 (French).
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Lory, Charles |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | French geologist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | July 30, 1823 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Nantes |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 3, 1889 |
| Place of death | Grenoble |