Eduard Suess' first monograph: a work that revolutionized the geology and pioneered the tectonics theory.
This rare book is signed on cover by one of the famous British geologists, Charles Lapworth, Professor of
Geology at Birmingham University. Charles Lapworth coined the term 'Ordovician' Period and originated
the faunal identification using index fossils.
Eduard Suess, an autodidact scientist, ''is probablly the greatest geologist who ever lived" - Celal Sengor,
'Eduard Suess and Global Tectonics' in: Austrian Journal of Earth Sciences Volume 107/1, Vienna, 2014, p. 7
''Based on his early work on stratigraphy, geology and paleontology since ca. 1852, Eduard Suess became highly interested in the tectonic evolution of mountain ranges, particularly of the Alps. He wrote down his ideas in an influential book on the origin of the Alps (Suess, 1875). In this book he already introduced the comparative method in tectonics and was the master of this approach. He based his arguments on the comparison of distinct features of the Alps with many mountain belts worldwide.''
Franz Neubauer, 'The Eastern Alps: from Eduard Suess to Present-Day Knowledge'
in: Austrian Journal of Earth Sciences Vol. 107/1, Vienna, 2014, p. 83
"The treatise 'Die Entstehung der Alpen' by Eduard Suess (1875) had an extraordinary impact on geological reasoning regarding mountain building and orogeny during the decades after its publication. Even today the ideas are fascinating and challenging due to the wealth of geological observations and the admirable degree of generalization."
Erwald Bruckl and Christa Hammerl, 'Eduard Suess Conception of the Alpine Orogeny Related to
Geophysical Data and Models' in Austrian Journal of Earth Sciences, Vol. 107/1, Vienna, 2014, p. 95
''Die Entstehung der Alpen is a small work of 168 pages, published in Vienna in 1875, composed of 8 chapters. The author brings up and defends the idea that in the formation of mountains the preponderating role is played by horizontal displacements, moving in one direction. Each chain is a whole, thrust from the same quarter over the preexisting formations, which resist, and on which the compressed zone advances. There is but one cause which has produced the whole Alpine system; this cause is a thrust from the south or southeast. Characteristics analogous to those of the Alps are manifested in the Balkans, in the Caucasus, in the chains of the American northwest. Each chain is the work of a very long period, and its formation is the sum of a multiplicity of occurrences. The author insists on the coincidence of the Alpine zone with geosynclines. He remarks—and no one before him had cared to do it—on the magnitude and the generality of certain marine transgressions; for example, of the Cenomanian transgression. He foresaw the periodicity and the quasigenerality of transgressions and recessions. In the next to the last chapter he invites us to make with him the tour of the earth; he shows us in Europe and in the east of northern America the predominance of thrusts toward the north; he calls our attention to those immense regions of the surface of the [p.716] earth which seem refractory to folding, and which are traversed by fissures whose direction almost follows the meridian; he makes us see that in central Asia the overthrust of the chains is usually toward the south. The conclusion of this rapid journey around the globe is that in terrestrial deformation there is no simple geometry; that the mountains result from the irregular and unequal contraction of a planet devoid of homogeneity; finally, that this lack of homogeneity goes back to the period of consolidation of the lithosphere. It could not become hard all at once; it presented for a long time the appearance of an archipelago of scoriaceous masses floating on a fluid and incandescent sea. The earth was then a variable star.
The influence of the book was great. It was short, readable, perfectly clear; it revealed a new geology, unsuspected, immediately accessible; it is written in language simple and beautiful. It has directed young geologists of every country toward the study of the mountains; it definitely destroyed the old theories. It substituted, in the minds of all geologists, for the principle of direction the principle of continuity; it accustomed investigators to the idea of transportations of strata; it fixed attention on the great movements of advance and of retreat of the sea. In a word, it was the preface of 'Das Antlitz der Erde', the prelude of that incomparable symphony."
Pierre Termier, 'Sketch of the Life of Eduard Suess (1831-1914)' Text from Smithsonian
Institution, Annual Report for the Year Ending June 30, 1914 (1915), pp. 709-718
''Suess was genuinely interested in knowing and understanding. He was an information absorber and a knowledge generater on a hitherto unseen scale in geology. He had no interest in being considered by others to be right or being regarded as an authority. He never fished for recognition, but was always hungry for knowledge […]
When the City [of Vienna] was approached with an invitation to take part in the celebrations at the occasion of the centenary of the death of the master [in 2014], its Cultural Office expressed little interest, although those who declined to be interested every day drink the water Suess provided for them.''
Celal Sengor, 2014, p. 66
Die Entstehung der Alpen, 1st Edition, Wilhelm Braumueler, Wien, 1875,
8vo, pp. IV, 168; signed by Charles Lapworth on first cover; soft printed;
annoted in pencil (p. 3, 29, 71 and 84) by Charles Lapworth (in English)
covers preserved within a contemporary beautiful binding, half-bound in
leather. Good condition; ex Charles Lapworth Library at Birmingham;
stamps on covers and title-page; personal copy of Charles Lapworth.
RARE
Price; US $99,000.00