Jean Vogt 1929–2005: His Life as a Seismologist, Geologist, Geographer, and Historian - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 6

T a b l e 2 Geological missions of Jean Vogt from 1960 to 1974 (list not exhaustiv e)
1960 France (Brittany, Limousin)
1961 Gabon; Republic of the Congo (Kouyi Plateau)
1961 Niger; Algeria (Laouni, Southern Hoggar)
1962 Niger (Aır); Gabon (Makongonio);
1964 Cameroon (Adamaoua); Madagascar
1965 Madagascar
1965 Burkina Faso (Black Volta and Comoe); USA (Wyoming and Colorado)
1966 Burkina Faso (Comoe, Lobi); Western Cameroon
1967 Burkina Faso - C ote d'Ivoire; Senegal
1968 C ote d'Ivoire (Seguela); Burkina Faso; Saudi Arabia
1970 Malaysia
1974 New-Caledonia
Undated: Australia, Brazil, Fiji, etc.
(French Guiana). In 1960, the personnel of the disappearing SGPM, including Jean
Vogt, joined the BRGM.
This was the start of a new period for Vogt. During the next 15 years, he travelled
tirelessly for the BRGM throughout the five continents, mixing field work, archive
depositories and libraries visits, and scientific meetings participations (Table 2). He
extended his geomorphological skills acquired in AOF to several countries world-
wide where he performed numerous geological missions. He married in 1961, and
had two daughters. The family was first based in Algeria, then in Strasbourg, and
eventually moved in 1967 to Orleans, the city hosting the headquarters of BRGM.
Sadly, his wife died there accidentally in the late 70s.
Vogt worked on many geological subjects. Not only did he investigate several
geomorphological problems, as erosion surfaces, alluviums, including the famous
stone-line (Vogt and Vincent 1966), but he also studied several ore deposits (dia-
mond, gold, nickel, sulphur, uranium) and the mineral industry.
The French Geologic Mapping Service ( Service de la Carte Geologique ), cre-
ated in 1868 under the direction of the Ministry of Industry, was mainly under the
influence of the School of Mines ( Ecole des Mines ) and of the University. In 1968, it
became a service of the BRGM. In the following years, Jean Vogt played a key role
in the renovation of the Service, initiating several developments on the cartography
of quaternary and superficial formations (Vincent 2005).
Surprisingly enough, during all these years, Vogt did not refrain from his hobby
research, the agrarian history of Alsace and surrounding regions. In Saarbrucken,
in 1951, he started to work on a thesis whose subject was the historical erosion of
soils. Though his departure for Africa in 1954 put a temporary end to this project,
from then on he spent his vacations and free time to develop and extend this theme
as a personal research. This eventually allowed him to defend a thesis (Vogt 1963)
in Strasbourg on the agrarian history of the Rhine region. From 1951 to 1974 he
visited numerous European archives and libraries and published more than 100 notes
related to this research, mainly in the journals of regional learned societies (Frechet
2007). He continued this research his life away and is now considered one of the
best connoisseurs of rural history of Alsace and beyond (Boehler 2002, 2005). From