| Born January 6,1879 in Eaux-Vives (Genève), died september 14, 1940 in Neuchâtel, Corsier (GE). Son of Gédéon-Louis, clerk, Protestant, and Franceline Jeannette Taberlet, Catholic, of Morzine (Haute-Savoie), who were divorced in 1887. Never married. Student at the vocational school in Geneva, becoming a draftsman in a building firm. Completed traditional baccalaureat in Paris (where his mother lived) in 1902, studied medicine in Paris and Lausanne (1902-1904). Enthusiastic about geology, he gave up medicine.
In 1905, he co-authored with his mentor Maurice Lugeon fundamental notes on the structure of the Pennine Alps and the overthrust folds of Sicily. Continuing his work in the Valaisanne and Piedmontese Alps, he published the Carte géologique du massif de la Dent Blanche (1908), then his thesis (1909), which is a commentary on the map. In 1911, his charts on the recumbent folds of the Pennine Alps and the Western Alps clearly describe for the first time the structure of the chain, of the Gulf of Gênes in central Switzerland. He was appointed professor of geology in Neuchâtel (1911). Sur l'arc des Alpes occidentales (1916) presents the kinematics of the Alps from the point of view of their embryonic evolution.
Adopting very early the continental drift ideas of Alfred Wegener, Argand amplified the theory by his principal and brilliant work, La tectonique de l'Asie (1924), which includes the evolution of the Earth as a whole. Spendiaroff prize (1913) and Marcel Benoist prize (1927).
Sources: Archives of the Institut de Géologie de l'Université de Neuchâtel; and J.P. Schaer, Emile Argand 1879-1940, Eclogae geologicae Helvetiae, 84, 1991, 511-534. (Translated by Fred Colbourne). Biography in French
Emile Argand, Tectonics of Asia, translated and edited by Albert V. Carozzi, Hafner, (1977). ISBN : 0028403908. Map of Switzerland. (Neuchâtel is near the center left of the map.) |
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