Amanz Gressly

Amanz Gressly (July 17th 1814 with Bärschwil; April 13rd 1865 with Bern) was a Géologue and a paleontologist Suisse. It is him which introduced the concept of Faciès in geology, it is regarded as one of the founders of the modern Stratigraphie and the Paléoécologie.

Biography

Amanz Gressly was born in Bärschwil, wire of Xaver Franz Gressly and Margrit, born von Glutz-Ruchti. It is the groin of eight children. Gressly were regarded as an easy family, the family glassmaking with Bärschwil goes bankrupt unfortunately in the years 1850. Amanz Gressly thereafter always tried to support his/her ruined father, even if it were often itself in financial problems.

It begins studies of Médecine to Strasbourg, but stops them quickly and devotes themselves completely to its passion, the Géologie, mainly in Autodidacte. As of this time, it starts to collect the Fossile S, which it will do all its life in an intensive way. In its biography on Gressly (appeared in 1986), Stampfli quotes the zoologist Johann Jakob von Tschudi: Put aside the stones, nothing existed for him, and I believe that to break a fossil shell in front of its eyes would have involved hysterical convulsions of its share.

As from 1836, it resides mainly at Neuchâtel, where he becomes collaborator of Louis Agassiz, with Carl Vogt and Pierre Jean Edouard Desor. Agassiz had noticed the collection of petrified objects of Gressly, abundant and ordered well, and had then invited it to Neuchâtel. In the introduction of its Monograph on the bivalvular Mya arenaria , Agassiz explains why it owes major the part of materials of this work in Gressly. Besides it names a new species of fossil bivalve which had just been discovered Gresslya , in honor of its assistant.

Nevertheless, Gressly does not feel at his place in Neuchâtel, it writes in January 1845 in a letter with professor Schlatter of Soleure: Neuchâtel seems to me a city more mortal and having less taste than any other and without Agassiz, I would have evil to sleep there. . Two months later, it leaves the city. It resides at it again in manner prolonged only between semi-1855 and 1863. Gressly also feels disappointed by Agassiz, its model admired, which took along some of the most beautiful specimens of the collection of Gressly when he emigrated with the the United States. The real conditions of this loan remain not very clear. Apparently, Agassiz also gave up the offer to take along Gressly with him to America.

Already during its period neuchâteloise, Gressly resides regularly at Soleure. After having cured of an attack of nerves following the completion of its book geological Observations on the Jura Soleurois (in 1841), there remains a certain time there to install an exposure of its collection in the college of the canton ( Kantonschule ), at the request of the service of education. During the ten years in Neuchâtel, Gressly never remains a long time at the same place, but prefers to traverse and study all the Massif of the surrounding Jura.

Starting from the beginning of the year 1850, Gressly is invited by the railway company Schweizerische Centralbahn as expert geologist during the construction of several railway lines in the Jura, inter alia the line of Hauenstein ( Hauensteinlinie ) Basle - Olten and the line Basle - Laufon - Delémont - Sonceboz - Bienne.

The geological profile made up during boring of the first tunnel of Hauenstein-Scheitel receives a strong repercussion. Gressly saw several months with Olten, but often returns visit to the British company Thomas Brassey responsible for boring, with Buckten. He learns the English on this occasion. He works then on other projects railway, as on profile of the tunnel under the Vue of the Alps, between the Val of Ruz and La Chaux-de-Fonds: the forecasts of Gresslys during the construction of the tunnel prove relevant quasi-parfaitement. According to Hartmann (in 1868), the geological company of London greets this conformity of the theory with respect to the practice like a triumph bursting of science.

Gressly undertakes other voyages: in 1859 in France, at the edge of the Gulf of Lions, to study with Desor the marine animals there. Then it goes, under the direction of Georg Berna, with the Northern Cape, on the island of Jan Mayen and in Iceland, with Carl Vogt and other scientists.

Gressly suffers since its youth from psychic problems which worsen in the years 1860. It is as from the summer 1864 in treatment the psychiatric clinical of Waldau to Bern. It seemed on the way of the cure when it dies suddenly of a brain attack on April 13rd, 1865.

Amanz Gressly is buried with the cemetery St-Nicolas ( St Niklaus ) close to Soleure. On its tomb stone is written the following Latin epitaph:

Gresslius interiit lapidum consumptus amore,

Undique collectis not flees hausta famed.

Ponimus hoc saxum. Mehercle! totus opertus

Gresslius hoc sax, nunc satiatus erit.

This ironic inscription, that Gressly transcribed itself in Latin starting from the epitaph of a mineralogist, going back to 1796, can be translated as follows:

Ci-to lie Gressly, which died of a strange love for the stones;

that it brought back to the house, not calming its hunger.

Let us pose this stone. Stone entirely covered, by God! ,

Resting between rocks, it has enough stones.

Scientific importance

It introduced the concept of facies in geology, in its work in three parts geological Observations on the Jura Soleurois , published between 1838 and 1841. He is regarded as one of the founders of the modern Stratigraphie, he had already developed the principle that Johannes Walther will name later rule of facies .

A dinosaur, described for the first time in 1857, is named in its honor: the Gresslyosaurus. It is certainly acted in fact of the Plateosaurus.

Personality

Amanz Gressly was regarded by its contemporaries as private individual. Its clothing was generally neglected and it carried a bulky bard, often disordered. In company, it was reserved, even timid, but friendly. Written Stampfli: It would be qualified now certainly the marginal one, of not-conventional, but it was equipped with an extraordinary intelligence .

In his book Gallery berühmter Schweizer der Neuzeit (gallery the Swiss famous ones of the modern time), Alfred Hartmann brings back the portrait drawn up by a friend of Gressly:

A man of average stature, with a beard hirsute and savage, a gray and twisted soft felt hat, négligemment posed on its dishevelled hair. Under its right face and two broussailleux eyebrows, two piercing eyes observe through glasses; and its friendly smile often on the corner of the mouth betrays an inoffensive childish good-naturedness. The behavior of its body, a little ahead leaning, and its heavy step is the signs of a man more at ease on paths hard and escarpés that on the varnished parquet floor of a distinguished living room. Large pocket of its gray coat ever brushed and often torn leaves a hammer geologist, emblem of his science… To supplement the image, it is necessary to add callous hands, which seldom saw water and the soap, of the studded climbing boots and a cigar lit to the mouth

Posthumous honor

Several memorials were drawn up in honor of this geologist known for these voyages of research in all the area of the Jura, and its originality:

in the cave of Vérène ( Verenaschlucht ) close to Soleure is a commemorative stone.
a memorial was installed close to the school of its birthplace Bärschwil, carved by the tessinois Remo Rossi.
a commemorative table is posed on the wall external of the museum of Laufon.
Soleure has a street on its behalf Amanz-Gressly-Strasse .
the Swiss company of paleontology ( Schweizerische Paläontologische Gesellschaft ) decrees since 2004 the medal Amanz-Gressly for particular merits in paleontology.

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