His geological researches were global in scope: •
East Greenland (1934), a 4-month expedition under
Lauge Koch. •
Himalaya (1936), an 8-month expedition under Arnold Heim. •
Colombia (1937–1945, for
Shell) •
Trinidad (1947–1950, for Shell) •
Iran (1951–1958, chief geologist of the
National Iranian Oil Company) He got the Tibetan variant of
malaria at the First Swiss Himalaya Expedition, and thereafter a lifelong resistance. He circumambulated
Mount Kailash disguised as a pilgrim, discovering at the foot of the mountain the origin of one rock seen in the Indian part of the
Himalayas and a sensation: seafloor rocks on its South side (
ophiolites). Later on, he interpreted this
Indus-Yarlung-Tsangpo Suture Zone (ISZ) as the border between the
Indian and the
Eurasian Plate. Iran: using his field notes and relief pictures taken by the Iranian Air Force, he chose a 50x 12 km area. Four drillings were not able to go through a huge salt and gypsum layer. Only Number 5 was successful, the largest known '
wildcat'
oil gusher, North of
Qom (Iran) on 26 August 1956 (3,000 m deep, 80,000 tons oil/day). The gas got lighted up on 13 September, sometime later the well closed itself. From 1958 until 1977, he was professor of geology at the
University and the
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, from where he carried out several researches in the Himalayas (
Nepal,
India and
Bhutan). There were five expeditions between 1963 and 1977 to Bhutan. In 1980 and 1985 he was invited by
Deng Xiaoping to
Tibet. Notes: the Greenland expedition included Professor
Eugen Wegmann (
University of Neuchâtel), Swiss geologists René Masson and Eduard Wenk. The Bhutan expeditions were possible with the help of Jigme Dorje Wangchuks, King of Bhutan and his adviser Fritz von Schulthess. ==Family==