André Dumont

André Hubert Dumont (* February 15, 1809 in Liege, † February 28, 1857 Liège ) was a Belgian geologist who performed the first in-depth geological survey of Belgium.

Life and work

Dumont was an excellent student, in 1832 he won a prize for a study of the Belgian province of Liège geology. From 1835 until his death he was professor of geology and mineralogy at the University of Liège. Later he was also rector of this university. His most important work was the geological mapping of Belgium, which took several years. He visited almost every digestion in Belgium on foot. In 1849 he published the first geological map of Belgium. Until his death, he was concerned with the improvement of this card.

Dumont made ​​a lithological and stratigraphic view of excellent subdivision of Paleozoic rocks in southern Belgium. This should still form along with the work of Jules Gosselet for a long time the basis for further geological research. His Mémoire sur les terrains ardennais rhénan et de l' Ardenne, du Brabant et du Condroz included a mineralogical very detailed description of the stratigraphy of the Ardennes, but was still in need of improvement in the field of fossils. Unlike other geologists of his time as the Briton Roderick Murchison, the Frenchman Edouard de Verneuil or the Russian Pyotr Tschichatschow to Dumont afraid to compare his subdivision of the Ardennes with other areas in Europe. He thought that the faunas of these regions could differ greatly, so that when the correlation with the help of index fossils caution is warranted. Therefore he would not even recognize or Silurian Devonian in Belgium, stratigraphic units, among other things, defined by Murchison in the UK.

Nevertheless, he turned to comparative research between the Tertiary in southern England and in Belgium. He also traveled to the Bosporus and to Spain, to study the similarities in the two areas. In 1850 he proposed the geological stage of Ypresium.

Another issue with which he worked was researching for ore and minerals.

Award

The Geological Society of London drew Dumont 1840 the Wollaston medal. He was a member of the Belgian Academy of Sciences.

Others

In 2005, he was also one of the candidates for the title of Most Belgians, but could not on the final list of nominations and was ranked 193 of those so just fell from the nomination list.