Augusto Gansser-Biaggi

Augusto Gansser ( born October 28, 1910 in Milan, Italy, † January 9, 2012 in Massagno, Switzerland ) was a Swiss geologist who has his almost 80 years of research in word, sketches and photographs extensively documented.

Life

Training and first expeditions

Augusto Gansser was born as the eldest son of Swiss abroad in Milan and attended schools in Lugano and Trogen. From 1929 he studied geology at the University of Zurich. The first expedition led him in 1934 with the Danish researchers Lauge Koch on the sailing steamboat Gustav Holm to the east coast of Greenland.

Shortly before graduation, he went with Arnold home to the first Swiss Himalayan expedition, which lasted eight months. This Gansser discovered the geological interface between the Indian and the Eurasian plate at the foot of Mount Kailash and was the first geologist who explored this holy mountain in Tibet. Since the entering of Tibet at that time was forbidden for foreigners Gansser undertook the circumambulation of Kailash from Indian soil from disguised as a Buddhist pilgrim.

Research and teaching

After returning Augusto Gansser married the Luganeserin Linda Biaggi, called " Toti ". The marriage produced two sons and four daughters were born.

The family first lived from 1938 to 1946 in Colombia, then to 1949 on the island of Trinidad, both times on behalf of the oil company Shell. As chief geologist of the National Iranian Oil Company National Iranian Oil Company sought Gansser 1950-1957, at the time of the Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, after oil.

1958 he was appointed as a professor of geology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ( ETH) and the University of Zurich. Gansser headed the Department of Geology at the ETH. In addition, he continued his research in Ladakh, Nepal, Bhutan, the Canadian Arctic, the Urals, Afghanistan, Patagonia and Antarctica. Highly productive five expeditions to Bhutan 1963-1977. Gansser were explored while the northern mountains on the border of Tibet and was the first charted the isolated Kingdom.

After the retirement

After Gansser 1977 his teaching career ended, he traveled the world continues and published extensively. 1980 and 1985 invited him to the Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping in to expeditions through Tibet.

His age residence was whether Lugano, where he lived alone in 2000 after the death of his patients suffering from Alzheimer's dementia wife Linda.

In 2008, his eldest daughter, the photographer Ursula Markus, a biography ( with texts by Ursula Eichenberger ) issued, in which especially black and white photographs and sketches depicted from his research trips.

Memberships and Awards

Publications

  • Throne of the Gods: Experiences of the first Swiss Himalayan expedition ( with Arnold Heim ), Zurich: Morgarten -Verlag, 1938.
  • Geology of the Himalayas, London / New York / Sydney: Wiley Interscience 1964.
  • Hidden treasures in Bhutan ( with Ursula Markus and Blanche Olschak ), Bern: Hallwag 1969.
  • Geology of Bhutan Himalayas, Basel / Boston / Stuttgart: Birkhauser, 1983 ISBN 3-7643-1371-4.
  • Bhutan: Kingdom in the Himalaya ( with Ursula Markus and Blanche Olschak ), Freiburg im Breisgau. ISBN 3-7611-0652-1 Atlantis 1983
  • Schalensteine ​​: prehistoric cultural objects, Munich: Verlag Dr. Christian Müller- Straten 1999 ISBN 978-3-932704-66-6.
  • Ursula Eichenberger ( text ), Ursula Markus (Ed.): Augusto Gansser. From the life of a world - Erkunders, Zurich: AS Verlag 2008 ISBN 978-3-909111-58-9.
88634
de