Augusto Gansser-Biaggi

Augusto Gansser-Biaggi

9 July 1936, Augusto Gansser is back to India, disguised as a pilgrim.
Born 28 October 1910
Milan, Italy
Died 9 January 2012(2012-01-09) (aged 101)
Massagno TI, Switzerland
Nationality Swiss
Fields geology, petroleum geology
Institutions Shell, National Iranian Oil Company
Professor of Geology, ETH Zurich (1958–1977)
Alma mater ETH Zurich
Known for Geology of the Himalayas (1964), Geology of Bhutan Himalaya (1983)
Notable awards Gustav-Steinmann-Medaille (1982)

Augusto Gansser-Biaggi (28 October 1910 – 9 January 2012[1]) was a Swiss geologist who specialised in the geology of the Himalayas. He was born in Milan.

Career

His geological researches were global in scope:

He got the Tibetan variant of malaria at the First Swiss Himalaya Expedition, and thereafter a lifelong resistance. He circumambulated Mount Kailash disguised as a pilgrim, discovering at the foot of the mountain the origin of one rock seen in the Indian part of the Himalayas and a sensation: seafloor rocks on its South side (ophiolites). Later on, he interpreted this Indus-Yarlung-Tsangpo Suture Zone (ISZ) as the border between the Indian and the Eurasian Plate.

Iran: using his field notes and relief pictures taken by the Iranian Air Force, he chose a 50x 12 km area. Four drillings were not able to go through a huge salt and gypsum layer. Only Number 5 was successful, the largest known 'wildcat' oil gusher, North of Qom (Iran) on 26 August 1956 (3,000 m deep, 80,000 tons oil/day). The gas got lighted up on 13 September, sometime later the well closed itself.[2][3]

From 1958 until 1977, he was professor of Geology at the University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, from where he carried out several researches in the Himalayas (Nepal, India and Bhutan). There were five expeditions between 1963 and 1977 to Bhutan. In 1980 and 1985 he was invited by Deng Xiao Ping to Tibet.

Notes: the Greenland expedition included Professor Eugen Wegmann (University of Neuchâtel), Swiss geologists René Masson and Eduard Wenk. The Bhutan expeditions were possible with the help of Jigme Dorje Wangchuks, King of Bhutan and his adviser Fritz von Schulthess.

Family

After the first Himalayan expedition he married Linda Biaggi (Toti) from Lugano. The family has two sons and four daughters: Ursula (1941), Mario (1943), Luca (1945), Manuela (1949), Francesca (1956), Rosanna (1959). He named Pico Toti, Sierra Nevada del Cocuy (Colombia) after his wife following their joint first ascent. She died in 2000 (Alzheimer's disease). Gansser-Biaggi turned 100 on 28 October 2010.[4]

Awards

Publications

References

  1. ↑ http://www.ethlife.ethz.ch/archive_articles/120111_Augusto_Gansser_Tod_su/index
  2. ↑ McFarlan, Donald (1989). The Guinness Book of Records. Guinness Publishing Ltd. p. 76. ISBN 978-0-85112-341-7.
  3. ↑ Müller, Thomas (25 October 2010). "Augusto Gansser". Migros-Magazin (in German) (43): 26–33.
  4. ↑ "Zum 100. Geburtstag von Augusto Gansser" (in German). Schweizer Radio DRS. 2010-10-31. Retrieved 2010-11-01.

Further reading

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