******************************************************************* From: Gerald Ernst <plumeman2000@xxxxxxxxxxx> ******************************************************************* Event announcement: Haroun Tazieff: Personality and legacy In February 1998, 10 years ago, Haroun Tazieff died, aged 85. In mid-2007, I was contacted by his son, Frederic Lavachery, currently researching for a book he is writing about the Tazieff's family and who was seeking information. We realised that Tazieff seems to have been forgotten by the institutions he served and sometimes contributed to create and that no event was planned to commemorate Tazieff, eg. neither in Belgium nor in France. This led us to organize the following event which we are pleased to announce for those interested in remembering Tazieff and in considering what turned him into one of the great explorers (for a short period, of caves, then of volcanoes) and volcano documentary film-makers of the 20th century, into one of the precursors to modern volcanology, into one of the co-founders of volcano monitoring from Belgium (Congo), France and Italy, and ultimately to a sort of Minister for Natural Disasters in France. There will be a half-day to commemorate Tazieff through the showing of two of his most famous films: "Le gouffre de la Pierre-St-Martin" and "Les rendez-vous du diable" and through some moderated discussions to debate about Tazieff's life, unique personality, role in exploration, as a precursor of the volcanology science, and as an intervenant in science policy. Participants in the debates will include the public, Alain Bernard (volcanologist, University of Brussels), Jean-Christophe Sabroux (volcanologist, France), Michel Luquet (a leading cave explorer, France), myself (volcanologist, University of Ghent) and a leading Belgian journalist (moderator). Event is on 9 February, 2008, from 15h-19h30. Language is French. Venue is: Espace Delvaux, Rue Grates, 3 (Place Keym), 1170 Watermael-Boistfort, Brussels, Belgium Info on internet & to reserve a seat: www.lavenerie.be (info on invitees not up-to-date on that website) Partners: Cultural Centre of Boitsfort, "Exploration du monde", "Les jeunesses scientifiques de Belgique", LAVE and IAVCEI. Sponsors: virtually none so far (we are facing costs of over 1000 euros); we have faced the refusal of most institutions contacted so far; Tazieff does seem indeed to be truly forgotten; if you'd like to help, please get in touch (plumeman2000@xxxxxxxxxxx) For those interested, I try to summarize hereafter what comes to my mind when considering Tazieff. Of Armenian origin, Tazieff really grew up in Brussels where he lived for 20 years before becoming the explorer and the precursor of volcanology that you may have heard of. The Brussels area where he grew up (Boistfort) was the sort of "Montmartre" of Brussels in the 1920s and 1930s. His step-father, Robert Vivier, was a famous writer and poet in Belgium and his mother, Zenita Tazieff, a chemist, communist activist, and artist-painter. They regularly held parties with other leading artists, scientists and inventors who lived in the neighbourhood at the time. This stimulating environment had a strong influence on the development of Tazieff's personality, and the poetic quality of his fascinating accounts of eruptions can probably be traced to the influence of his step-father who fostered in him a deep appreciation of language and poetry. During the second world war, Tazieff who had studied to become an agricultural engineer continued his studies at the University of Liege, studying geology and mining during the day and helping the resistance effort at night. There he became fascinated particularly by the continental drift theory of Alfred Wegener. He is also remembered in Belgium as a war hero from his resistance activities. After the war, Tazieff worked in mining exploration in the then Belgian Congo, then eventually joined the Colonial Geological Survey there. In 1948, Tazieff first witnessed an adventive eruption from Nyamulagira (the Kituro eruption) and made his first short film. Note he was already 34 years old and this was his first encounter with volcanoes. The next year, he was amongst the first to observe the Nyiragongo lava lake and the first to film it and to reveal it to the world. He had discovered his calling for volcano exploration and spent much of the rest of his life playing dare-devil with eruptions in progress and filming volcanic activity at close quarters (something which is actively discouraged today because of the great risks involved). His films were often spectacular, one could say they had an almost hypnothic quality, and they made him famous especially in the French-speaking part of Europe. He was probably the first to make colour films of eruptions and to popularize volcanology with the public at large. Volcanoes were not well-known, especially they had not yet been seen in motion or in colour by most people. Thanks to Tazieff, everyone now had a pretty good idea what eruptions look like. A much more controversial part of his life concerns his role as a contributor in volcanological science. Tazieff never had the patience to spend much time in laboratories doing time-consuming analyses or sitting down to write papers about his discoveries made in the field. He did not train in volcanology research through a PhD in volcanology. He preferred climbing erupting mountains, exploration, sporty action and taking personal risks that challenged him. Yet, by his own admission, he was also animated by a desire to understand how eruptions work and he quickly became one of few who had detailed field knowledge of many volcanoes. He was a self-proclaimed and self-taught researcher and generously financed (partly through the profits from his popular films, books, conferences) the research of some of the first multidisciplinary teams in volcanology in Belgium, France and Italy at the time, notably helping many young volcano scientists whom he took under his wing getting started. Somehow Tazieff served the important role of a catalyst that led to modern volcanological research in France especially and probably in part in Italy, at a time when multidisciplinary research on volcanoes was in its infancy in those countries. He promoted measurements of lava flow and lava lake properties, of high-temperature fumaroles and degassing, and of documentation of natural laboratories (eg. Nyiragongo lava lake). Scarcely did he do the hard-core scientific work himself but he was regularly a visionary as well as logistic and managing motor behind it. Many French-speaking volcanologists trace their vocation to a film of Tazieff seen in childhood, to a Tazieff conference or to having participated in one of his famous expeditions to erupting volcanoes. Many volcanologists in France can be regarded, in a way, as the scientific children of the great explorer and have become major contributors to our science. George Walker, who can be regarded as the father of field-based physical volcanology, certainly in the anglo-saxon world, once confessed to me his gratitude to Tazieff, who then influencial in volcanology internationally, had strongly supported George's application for the post of volcanology professor at the University of Hawaii. At the time George had no fixed post and was intensely concerned about his future. Thanks, according to George, in large part to Tazieff' support, George was successful. This enabled George to continue revolutionizing the science of volcanology for the next 15 years from a stable base at Hawaii. Many of Tazieff's contributions, like this one, are indirect but nonetheless proved important. Tazieff (like George Walker) also played a key role in the geological verification of the plate tectonics theory, realising the significance of the Red Sea and of the Afar depression (Ethiopia) as early as in the 1950s and supporting a multidisciplinary field study of Afar in the late 1960s and early 1970s with his close friends Franco Barberi, Jacques Varet and Georgio Marinelli. In my own understanding, as the modern science of volcanology really kicked off, the lack of strong scientific research training for Tazieff really caught up with him increasingly, started to isolate him more and more from the world of more rigorous scientists who were emerging as the leaders in volcanology research, some of whom he had launched or supported in the science. For someone who had played a key role as precursor to our science and who still had one of the greatest first-hand knowledge of volcanoes, from a field perspective, this must have been extremely difficult to accept. This is only my own reading of it; please do not get offended if you understand this differently. In the 1980s and 1990s, Tazieff got more and more involved in the shaping of science policy and of disaster preparedness efforts in France in particular. In Belgium and France, Tazieff did get volcanology extremely popular within the population at large, he was without doubt a great explorer, and he did pave the way for modern volcanology in parts of Europe. We think all this justifies revisiting some of his spectacular films, paying homage to him and examining his role and legacy during discussions involving the public whom he loved interacting with and who loved him back throughout his life. If you'd like to take part, see the website and join us on 9 February. A chance to practice your French and to discover lovely Brussels at the week-end ! Gerald --- Dr. Gerald GJ. ERNST, Belgian NSF Researcher, Mercator & Ortelius Research Centre for Eruption Dynamics, Geology Department, University of Ghent, Krijgslaan 281/S8, 9000 Ghent, Belgium ============================================================== To unsubscribe from the volcano list, send the message: signoff volcano to: listserv@xxxxxxx, or write to: volcano-request@xxxxxxxx To contribute to the volcano list, send your message to: volcano@xxxxxxxx Please do not send attachments. ==============================================================
