Termier, Pierre-Marie

Born July 3, 1859, in Lyon; died Oct. 23, 1930, in Grenoble. French geologist. Member of the French Académie des Sciences (1909).

Termier graduated from the Ecole Polytechnique in 1880 and from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in 1883 (both in Paris). He became a professor at the Ecole des Mines in St. Etienne in 1885 and at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines in Paris in 1894. He began working for the French Geological Survey in 1886 and became its director in 1911. His main works were devoted to tectonics. Termier compiled a general scheme of the structure of the Alps and determined the mountains’ nappe structure. He also gave a general description of the overthrust nappes. He described diapirism and studied regional metamorphism and granitization caused by folding.

Termier discovered and described several new minerals, including β-zoisite. He was a foreign corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (1925).