In 1936 Augusto Gansser (1910-2012) joined another Swiss geologist Arnold Heim (1882-1965) for the first Swiss expedition to the Himalayas that lasted for eight months. During the expedition both Heim and Gansser kept
Geology
Gneiss work!
Felspar, quartz and mica – the main mineral components that make up granite and another type of rock: gneiss. Even though it was used to construct some of Switzerland’s famous buildings, gneiss is relatively unknown compared to granite or marble.
The construction of the Gotthard railway – the southern access route to the Gotthard tunnel
Those who are allowed to make drawings for the Gotthard line here in the open air in 1875 should themselves lucky! The tunnel workers toiled in the often far too stuffy pits in the north and south. The construction company Favre allows this and numerous other
A piece of the moon in Zurich – the lunar rock exhibition at ETH Zurich in 1970
„Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.“
With these words uttered by Neil Armstrong during the first moon landing on 20 June 1969, America pipped the Soviet Union to the post in the race to the moon at the height of the Cold War (Jaumann 2009, 36). The years that followed until the last moon landing in December 1972 were
In search of black gold – Swiss petroleum geologists and the nationalisation of crude oil in Iran
After the Second World War, in the early days of the Cold War, Iran gradually began to break away from the geopolitical power games and economic greed of the major powers, which had especially set their sights on Iranian crude oil. At the end of 1949, the Iranian government founded Iran Oil Co. (Sherkat Sahami Naft Iran), an autonomous state-owned company.
Glow with the Flow: William Hamilton’s Campi Phlegraei (Naples, 1776-1779)
As a British diplomat at the court of the Kingdom of Naples, Sir William Hamilton (1730-1803) had an ideal location to study the volcanoes of the region. Several times he climbed Mount Vesuvius and witnessed the violent and dangerous outbreaks of the time. To capture his observations of