Leo Wehrli

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Self-portrait by Leo Wehrli am Grossen Mythen (1896)
Grethi, Leo and Ursula Wehrli (1945)

Leo Wehrli (born February 25, 1870 in Aarau ; died March 28, 1954 in Zurich ) was a Swiss geologist , high school teacher and explorer .

Live and act

Wehrli studied music , botany , chemistry , mineralogy , petrography and geology in Berlin and Zurich and became Albert Heim's assistant . After his dissertation on the diorite area of Schleins and Disentis, he went to Argentina in 1896 with Carl Emanuel Burckhardt . On behalf of the La Plata Museum and the Argentine government, he explored the Andes and crossed them at least five times during his two-year stay. The main focus of his work was the Argentine-Chilean border settlement (both countries had only signed a border treaty in 1881 ) as well as the determination of the summit lines and watershed issues .

After his return he worked from 1900 to 1935 as a teacher of geology and chemistry at the Höhere Töchterschule in Zurich. His laboratory assistant and right hand man was Gotthold Laupper (1873–1944), the inventor of the “Laupper probe” which was successfully used against the notorious haystack spontaneous combustion (haystack fires ).

As a speaker for the Geol. Centralblatt in Berlin, Wehrli wrote almost 500 papers between 1901 and 1912. He made further trips through Europe and North Africa and in 1938 again to Argentina. He summarized his research results in numerous articles, including for the Geographical Lexicon of Switzerland . He participated in the founding of the Zurich Adult Education Center and held lectures there from 1921 to 1953. From 1931 to 1951 he was a member of the commission of the Swiss Alpine Club SAC for the central library and was its president for a period of 14 years.

After a short illness, Wehrli died on March 28, 1954 at the age of 84.

Wehrli left a collection of 15,000 slides, some of which were colored by hand by his wife. A large part of the works is made available online from the ETH Library's picture archive .

Leo Wehrli was married to Anna Margaretha (Grethi), née Frey and the father of Edmund Wehrli .

  • Leo Wehrli and Carlos Bruck in front of the Planchon volcano (1897), slide colored by M. Wehrli-Frey

  • Leo Wehrli with mule, expedition to clean up the border (1898)

  • Bariloche (Argentina): Lecture by Leo Wehrli in the Swiss Colony (1938)

  • Leo Wehrli and two Indian women, Boliche Zacaria, Limay (1938)

  • Leo Wehrli, Krystallwelt, oil painting pinx.Rolf Vollé (1953)

Pictures by Leo Wehrli, colored by M. Wehrli-Frey

Works (selection)

  • The petrified forest in Chemnitz . Beer, Zurich 1915
  • The post-carbon coal of the Swiss Alps . Francke, Bern 1919
  • Overview and history of mining from its beginnings to mid-1917 with special consideration of the anthracites of the Valais with 47 text figures. Geogr. Map publisher Bern Kümmerly & Frey, Bern 1925

literature

Web links

Commons : Leo Wehrli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wehrli and Gotthold Laupper. Retrieved August 11, 2020 .
  2. ^ Peter Müller-Grieshaber: Wehrli, Edmund. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
personal data
SURNAME Wehrli, Leo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Wehrli-Frey, Leo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss geologist and explorer
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1870
PLACE OF BIRTH Aarau
DATE OF DEATH March 28, 1954
Place of death Zurich