French geologists

Pierre-Marie Termier (3 July 1859 – 23 October 1930) was a French geologist.

He was born in Lyon, in Rhône, France, the son of Joseph François Termier and Jeanne Mollard. At the age of 18 he entered the Polytechnic School, then the Paris School of Mines in 1880. After graduation, he became professor at the school of mines at Saint-Etienne. In 1894 he left for Paris, where he would teach for the remainder of his career.
He was elected as a member of the French Academy of Sciences in 1909, in the mineralogy section. Two years later he became the director of the French geological cartography service. In 1930 he became vice-president of the Academy.
During his career he performed geological studies of the Alps, as well as Corsica and North Africa. He was a proponent of the nappe concept and of tectonics as a mountain-building force.
The wrinkle ridge Dorsum Termier on the Moon is named after him.

Nicolas Auguste Pomel (20 September 1821 – 2 August 1898) was a French geologist, paleontologist and botanist. He worked as a mines engineer in Algeria and became a specialist in north African vertebrate fossils. He was Senator of Algeria for Oran from 1876 to 1882.

Ernest Charles Philippe Auguste Munier-Chalmas (7 April 1843 – 9 August 1903) was a French geologist, born at Tournus in Burgundy, who is known for his contributions to the understanding of the Cretaceous, but who also isolated and defined the Priabonian stage of the Late Eocene, in a paper co-written with Albert de Lapparent in 1893.
From 1864 he worked as an assistant in the geology department at the Sorbonne, and subsequently participated in geological missions to Austria-Hungary and the Venetian Alps. From 1882 he taught classes at the École Normale Supérieure, and in 1891 became a professor of geology at the Sorbonne. In addition, from 1892 to 1903, he was director of studies at the École pratique des hautes études.In 1873 he described the bivalve genera Matheronia and Toucasia (family Requieniidae). With paleontologist Charles Schlumberger, he conducted important investigations on sexual dimorphism in Foraminifera.In 1891 he was appointed president of the Société géologique de France. He was elected to the mineralogical section of the French Académie des sciences on 5 May 1903.In 1895, botanist Hermann zu Solms-Laubach published Chalmasia, which is a genus of green algae in the family Polyphysaceae and name in Chalmas's honour.He died in retirement at Aix-les-Bains, Provence.

Charles Jacob (1878-1962) was a French geologist. He served as the president of the French National Centre for Scientific Research from 1940 to 1944 under Vichy France.

Edmond Hébert (12 June 1812 – 4 April 1890), French geologist, was born at Villefargau, Yonne.
He was educated at the College de Meaux, Auxerre, and at the École Normale in Paris. In 1836 he became professor at Meaux, in 1838 demonstrator in chemistry and physics at the École Normale, and in 1841 sub-director of studies at that school and lecturer on geology. In 1857 the degree of D. es Sc. was conferred upon him, and he was appointed professor of geology at the Sorbonne.There he was eminently successful as a teacher, and worked with great zeal in the field, adding much to the knowledge of the Jurassic and older strata. He devoted, however, special attention to the subdivisions of the Cretaceous and Tertiary formations in France, and to their correlation with the strata in England and in southern Europe.To him we owe the first definite arrangement of the Chalk into palaeontological zones (see "Table" in Geol. Hag., 1869, p. 200). During his later years he was regarded as the leading geologist in France.He was elected a member of the Académie des sciences in 1877, Commander of the Legion of Honour in 1885, and he was three times president of the Geological Society of France. He died in Paris on 4 April 1890.

Gustave Émile Haug (19 June 1861 - 28 August 1927) was a French geologist and paleontologist known for his contribution to the geosyncline theory.

Marie Félix Albert Durand de Grossouvre (23 August 1849, Bourges – 18 May 1932, Bourges) was a French geologist, best known for his research in the fields of stratigraphy and paleontology.

François Cyrille Grand'Eury (9 March 1839, Houdreville – 22 July 1917, Malzéville) was a French geologist, paleontologist and mathematics teacher.
He studied at the École Loritz in Nancy and at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, and later worked as a mining engineer in Roche-la-Molière. From 1863 to 1899 he taught classes in mathematics at the École des mines in Saint-Étienne, where in 1883 he received the title of professor.From 1877 he was a member of the Société géologique de France and in 1885 was elected a correspondent member of the Académie des Sciences.He is remembered for his stratigraphic research of coal fields and for his investigations involving the formation of coal. He is credited with establishing the chronological succession of floras associated with the coal seams of the Stephanian stage (named after the development of this stage at Saint-Étienne). He conducted exhaustive studies of coal flora (Cordaites, Calamites, et al), and in 1877 described the genus Tubiculites.

Joseph Jean Baptiste Xavier Fournet (May 15, 1801 – January 8, 1869), French geologist and metallurgist, was born at Strasbourg.
He was educated at the École des Mines in Paris, and after considerable experience as a mining engineer he was in 1834 appointed professor of geology at Lyon.
He was a man of wide knowledge and extensive research, and wrote memoirs on chemical and mineralogical subjects, on eruptive rocks, on the structure of the Jura, the metamorphism of the Western Alps, on the formation of oolitic limestones, on kaolinization and on metalliferous veins. On metallurgical subjects he also was an acknowledged authority; and he published observations on the order of sulphurability of metals (loi de Fournet).
He died in Lyon. His chief publications were: Études sur les dépôts métallifères (Paris, 1834); Histoire de la dolomie (Lyon, 1847); De l'extension des terrains houillers (1855); and Géologie lyonnaise (Lyon, 1861).

Joseph Henri Ferdinand Douvillé (16 June 1846 – 19 January 1937), also known as Henri Douvillé, was French paleontologist, geologist and malacologist. Douvillé worked as a mining engineer in Bourges (1872) and Limoges (1874), afterwards serving as professeur suppléant of paleontology at the École des Mines. From 1881 to 1911 he was a professor of paleontology at the École des Mines.