Augusto Gansser-Biaggi
| Augusto Gansser-Biaggi | |
|---|---|
9 July 1936, Augusto Gansser is back to India, disguised as a pilgrim.
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| Born | 28 October 1910 Milan, Italy |
| Died | 9 January 2012 (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) was a Swiss geologist who specialised in the geology of the Himalayas. He was born in Milan.
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.
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.
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