Jean Vogt 1929–2005: His Life as a Seismologist, Geologist, Geographer, and Historian - Historical Seismology: Interdisciplinary Studies of Past and Recent Earthquakes - page 12

Jean Vogt's awareness of how critical is the interpretation of earthquake records to
avoid the “shortcomings” in parametric earthquake catalogues (see also Ambraseys
2008) made him focus on the “earthquakes wrongly interpreted as such”. He reck-
oned that the most widespread reasons were either the duplication of the date, an
incorrect location of the effects, or a wrong interpretation of the description of an-
other geological phenomenon (e.g. a landslide). A section devoted to these aspects
is included in his introduction to the catalogue for France (Vogt 1979), but many
and one examples can be found throughout his scientific production. His early un-
derstanding of how difficult was this problem to be properly solved was such that 15
years later he wrote: “ Discarding 'fake quakes', to which specialists often cling like
children to their toys, is indeed an arduous task ” (Vogt 1996).
7.2 Papers
Vogt attended and contributed to a number of international meetings and workshops
discussing the value of historical earthquake data in seismology, and left many traces
of his views, sometimes outstanding but at no time trivial. To simply list all his
public appearances at scientific conferences and workshops would not cast light
on the importance and the impulse that his continuous presence gave to this field
of research. Usually he submitted a short written contribution for the conference
proceedings, so that by going through his huge written production, listed in Frechet
(2007), one may find out the different aspects of seismological research he dealt
with and the milieux he addressed.
It is unfortunate that Jean Vogt did not find time to write some comprehensive
work on all his results. He blamed himself for it, but at the same time his mind was
more inclined to write detailed and incisive case studies. He published more than
850 articles and notes, in international journals as well as in poorly known local
scientific or historical learned societies (Frechet 2007). Among them, more than
200 were about earthquakes, more than 100 about geology or geomorphology, and
more than 500 relate to history and rural world. Most were written in French, some
in German, but several important papers were written in English.
7.3 Raw Material
Jean Vogt was a man of an impressive culture and a polyglot: he was fluent in
French, German, English, Dutch, and Spanish, and he also read Italian, and of
course Latin. He had the gift to master all the techniques of archive exploitation. He
applied his skills in his three favourite domains of investigation: history, geology,
and geophysics.
In Strasbourg, it was difficult not to meet him mornings in the reading rooms
of the Archives Departementales or of the Bibliotheque Nationale et Universitaire .