A Scotsman in Riviera: Thomas Allan and the geology of Nice (French Maritime Alps)

Abstract

In the early nineteenth century, the Scottish geologist Thomas Allan (1777–1833) stayed for a period of vacation in Nice (Maritime Alps, SE France), the ‘capital’ of French Riviera. Allan had the occasion to run several excursion in the surroundings of the city, thus making numerous original observations about the geological setting of the region, which he reported in a paper published in 1818 in the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Making constant reference to the familiar rocks of Great Britain and Ireland, Allan described the stratigraphic succession of the Nice area in one of the earliest geological works on that region—and the first written in the English language. A colour geological sketch map, attached to the paper, represents the first published geological map of the region.