Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Jean Vogt 1929-2005: His Life as a Seismologist,
Geologist, Geographer, and Historian
J. Frechet and P. Albini
Abstract
Jean Vogt was born in 1929 in Strasbourg (France), where he attended
primary and secondary school. At the University of Strasbourg, he graduated in
Geography, and majored in Geomorphology. His professor was the geographer Jean
Tricart, who taught him the importance of both geological field work and archive
investigation.
In 1955 he joined the French West-Africa Geological Service and later the French
Bureau for Geology and Mines (BRGM). Along the following 20 years he lived as a
“geological” globetrotter in a number of countries, dispensing his time between the
field and the archives. In these years, he was concerned mainly with mining geology,
geomorphology, superficial deposits, and landslides.
This unique experience led him in 1975 to the responsibility of the “Seismo-
Tectonic Project”, the BRGM project in relation with the French nuclear power
programme. From 1975 to 1984, he gave a substantial impulse to the study of
French historical earthquakes, and since then he visited almost every public archive
in France, and several major archives and libraries in Europe and abroad. He took
care at the same time of the follow-up of macroseismic studies of present-day earth-
quakes. After he retired in 1984, he continued on a personal basis his investiga-
tions of historical earthquakes, in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and the
Caribbean area.
Alongside and for about 50 years, Jean Vogt investigated uninterruptedly the
agrarian history of Northeastern France and Southwestern Germany. He published
in scientific journals and in local learned societies bulletins more than 500 notes
and articles devoted to a variety of subjects, such as soil erosion, agriculture, cattle
trade, and social conflicts.
Jean Vogt died on 5 June 2005 in Strasbourg. His scientific legacy consists of
a wealth of published papers, manuscripts, documentation related to history and
seismology, awaiting to be further exploited, as he would have done.
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