Jean Vogt 1929–2005: His Life as a Seismologist, Geologist, Geographer, and Historian - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 9

Belgium), supplied the project and the researchers involved with advices, sugges-
tions, short papers with titles sparkling with humour (“L'imbroglio des catalogues
de sismicite historique”, Vogt 1994). He made some serendipitous discoveries, as in
the case of the manuscript by von Degenfeld (Albini and Vogt 2008).
In accordance with his long experience, Vogt was also a specialist of macroseis-
mic intensity scales (Vogt 2003a). The revision of the MSK macroseismic scale
started in 1988 (ESC General Assembly, Sofia, Bulgaria) and he contributed in
an important way to the redefinition of its criteria to become the new European
Macroseismic Scale (EMS). He actively participated especially on the occasion of
the first release, in 1992, of the EMS-92, as the leader of the discussion on the
seismogeological and hydrogeological aspects, eventually collected in a joint paper
(Vogt et al. 1994). After the publication of the final version, the EMS-98 (Gr unthal
1998), Jean continued his speculations about geological effects and macroseismic
intensity scale. The results he left in an almost complete form have been slightly
edited and published in this volume (Vogt 2008b).
Alongside his collaborations in the framework of international projects, he main-
tained alive many individual scientific relationships. One of the most relevant was
his long-standing fellowship with Nick Ambraseys (Ambraseys 2008), the most
apparent result of which is a series of papers on the historical seismicity in some
North-Africa countries, like Algeria and Tunisia (see Frechet 2007). He received and
made informal visits with most of the European researchers involved in the investi-
gation of the earthquakes of the past centuries. He acted also as expert in historical
seismology for international organizations, especially for International Atomic En-
ergy Agency (IAEA) in the case of the investigation about the peninsula of Crimea,
and took part in some IAEA sponsored meetings (e.g. at Damascus, Syria, in 1992).
He also contributed to the EC project “Slow Active Faults in Europe” (SAFE) and
maintained close contact with the IPGS seismo-tectonic group from 1999 on.
Along these 20 years, Jean Vogt went on spending most of his time in libraries
and archives, every day improving his familiarity with the historical documenta-
tion, either collecting new primary sources or commenting on how they had been
interpreted by historians and seismologists. He accumulated an unrepeatable com-
prehension of how the documentary deposits came to be formed, and had the key to
enter their recesses and make them disclose their secrets. Based on a list supplied
by Jean himself in 1995, Fig. 1 sketches, though in an approximate way only, the
dense network of European libraries and archives he visited in 20 years, both on
his own resources and in the framework of his collaboration with European projects
(especially the EC RHISE project, mentioned above). In any case, he went visiting
new repositories whenever he was in a place for the first time, in fact after hav-
ing carefully planned to merge tourism and “work”, especially in his out-of-Europe
destinations (Fig. 2).
In the years between 2000 and 2004, though already with an unstable health (he
used to say he was “tired”), he exploited most of the material on West Indies he
had collected in the previous years. Several of his papers on this subject are still
in press in 2008, including one in this volume (Vogt 2008a). From the late nineties
he started avoiding the large meetings with hundreds or thousands of participants,