Henk Zwart

Memorial plaque for Zwart, Ulbo de Sitter u. a. in the Pyrenees

Henk Zwart (born March 30, 1924 in Enschede ; † November 18, 2012 ) was a Dutch geologist and petrograph, who dealt with structural geology (tectonics) and petrography of metamorphic rocks.

Zwart studied geology at the University of Leiden and received his doctorate from Ulbo de Sitter on tectonic structures in metamorphic rocks of the French Pyrenees (Massif von St. Barthelemy). In the following years he mapped extensively for de Sitter in the Pyrenees. In 1966 he became professor in Aarhus and in 1969 the successor to Ulbo de Sitter in Leiden. He built a laboratory for experimental petrography in Leiden and from 1980 at the University of Utrecht , where his department moved from Leiden. In particular, he investigated the reconstruction of geodynamic and metamorphic processes from newly discovered microstructures in metamorphic rocks that he came across by chance (a taxidermist did not make thin sections of metamorphic rocks perpendicular to the direction of the strips, as was customary at the time, but parallel to them). In 1988 he retired. His main areas of research were the Pyrenees, the Alps and the Caledonids (Scandinavia), and he made fundamental contributions to the distinction of orogeny of the Alpine type from that of the Variscan type.

Web links

• Obituary by Cees Passchier, 2012