Henri Schoeller

Henri Schoeller (7 August 1899 in Montmorency – 11 March 1988 in Talence) was an influential French geologist and hydrogeologist.

Early life and education

Henri Schoeller studied at the Sorbonne and at the Natural History Museum in Paris. He focussed on the stratigraphy and tectonics of the Paris Basin, then the French Alps in Provence and the Dauphinés. Most of his work was based on many years of geological mapping. By the time he received his doctorate in 1929, Henri Schoeller had published 20 publications, including four French geological maps at a scale of 1 : 50,000, which he introduced in France His doctoral supervisor, Professor Émile Haug, had planned an assistant position for him, but his sudden death disrupted Henri Schoeller's plans for an academic career and he had to pursue a different career. This circumstance was decisive for Henri Schoeller's future scientific direction As a French scholarship holder, he came to the University of Göttingen, Germany, for a year in 1929 and carried out tectonic and stratigraphic fieldwork under Professor Richard Ambronn, who had modern geophysical equipment.

Academic career

He was employed as a geologist by the Sociéte Géophysique de Recherches Minières, for which he worked in Tunisia until 1937. His main task was geological exploration for groundwater extraction, so Henri Schoeller increasingly turned to hydrogeology. He developed new hydrogeological methods, particularly for arid regions.

In 1937, he was appointed to the University of Bordeaux..