Reinhart A. Gygi (1935–2014): Scientific achievements of a life-long commitment to research in Late Jurassic carbonate sedimentology and biostratigraphy of the northern Swiss Jura Mountains

Abstract

On November 7th 2014, Reinhart A. Gygi died in his home at the Carl-Spitteler-Strasse 70 in Zurich-Witikon. With him, the scientific community lost the foremost expert of Late Jurassic stratigraphy of the Swiss Jura Mountains, and of Late Jurassic ammonites. During 34 years, he worked as curator at the Natural History Museum Basel, and he was a long-term member of the Swiss Palaeontological Society and the Swiss Geological Society. Reinhart A. Gygi, citizen of Aarau AG and Kappelen BE, was born in Zurich on November 25th 1935. His father was the engineer Hans Adolf Gygi who would later become director of the Holderbank Cement Mills and himself son of the factory founder Adolf Gygi. His mother was Berta Marilies, born Reinhart. Reinhart spent his early years together with his three siblings in the parental home in Moriken-Wildegg. He attended the primary school in Moriken, secondary and high school in Aarau. An inspiring high-school teacher was responsible that Reinhart became enthusiastic about geology. From 1954 on he stayed in Aarau, first in the house of family friends, then in his aunt Clarli’s house. Reinhart finished high school and passed the final exam in March 1956. In the following summer, Reinhart accompanied his father on a business trip to Canada. There he could work as trainee in a mining company and experienced the hard life of a prospecting geologists searching for iron and nickel ores. In October 1956, Reinhart started to study geology in Zurich, until summer 1957 at the ETH, then at the University of Zurich. During his early study years he already acted as an advisor for civil engineering and highway constructions. In 1961 he had completed the mandatory geological mapping, which he did in his ‘‘home range’’ on the Chestenberg just north of Moriken-Wildegg. This resulted in his first two publications (Hofmann and Gygi 1961; Gygi and Trumpy 1966). In 1962, Reinhart started working on his PhD thesis. Professor Rudolf Trumpy had proposed to investigate the Upper Jurassic of the canton Aargau, a subject that initially did not promise to be very rewarding to the student, but fieldwork, which was soon extended to the cantons Solothurn and Schaffhausen, yielded very interesting results. Reinhart had by that time already established himself as an expert of Jurassic stratigraphy of the Jura Mountains (Gygi and Stumm 1965; Gygi 1966a; Gygi et al. 1966). First results of his PhD work were published in 1966 (Gygi 1966b), and Reinhart finished his thesis on the Oxfordian of northern Switzerland and was promoted in the autumn of 1967. Reinhart had planned to become prospecting geologist, but Rudolf Trumpy could persuade him to apply for a research job. On December 1st 1967, he started working as research assistant at the Natural History Museum Basel where he could pursue his studies on the Upper Jurassic of northern Switzerland. The first month of the employment he worked without salary that he compensated with a month of travel abroad in April 1968. From his parents, Reinhart had received a 4WD-truck, a Volvo Laplander, as a present for passing the promotion, and he undertook together with a colleague a longer trip to the Middle East with this vehicle in April 1968. The focus of this trip was rather cultural than geological. Later this truck would also accompany him for fieldwork in many quarries of northern Switzerland. Another stay abroad during his first year at the Natural History Museum of Basel took him in the summer 1968 to Bermuda where he & Walter Etter walter.etter@bs.ch