Augusto Gansser-Biaggi


Augusto Gansser-Biaggi was a Swiss geologist who specialised in the geology of the Himalayas. He was born in Milan.

Career

His geological researches were global in scope:
He got the Tibetan variant of malaria at the First Swiss Himalaya Expedition, and thereafter a lifelong resistance. He circumambulated Mount Kailash disguised as a pilgrim, discovering at the foot of the mountain the origin of one rock seen in the Indian part of the Himalayas and a sensation: seafloor rocks on its South side. Later on, he interpreted this Indus-Yarlung-Tsangpo Suture Zone as the border between the Indian and the Eurasian Plate.
Iran: using his field notes and relief pictures taken by the Iranian Air Force, he chose a 50x 12 km area. Four drillings were not able to go through a huge salt and gypsum layer. Only Number 5 was successful, the largest known 'wildcat' oil gusher, North of Qom on 26 August 1956. The gas got lighted up on 13 September, sometime later the well closed itself.
From 1958 until 1977, he was professor of Geology at the University and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, from where he carried out several researches in the Himalayas. There were five expeditions between 1963 and 1977 to Bhutan. In 1980 and 1985 he was invited by Deng Xiaoping to Tibet.
Notes: the Greenland expedition included Professor Eugen Wegmann, Swiss geologists René Masson and Eduard Wenk. The Bhutan expeditions were possible with the help of Jigme Dorje Wangchuks, King of Bhutan and his adviser Fritz von Schulthess.

Family

After the first Himalayan expedition he married Linda Biaggi from Lugano. The family has two sons and four daughters: Ursula, Mario, Luca, Manuela, Francesca, Rosanna. He named Pico Toti, Sierra Nevada del Cocuy after his wife following their joint first ascent. She died in 2000. Gansser-Biaggi turned 100 on 28 October 2010.

Awards

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