Gerard De Geer
Baron Gerard Jacob De Geer ForMemRS (1858–1943) was a Swedish geologist who made significant contributions to Quaternary geology, particularly geomorphology and geochronology. De Geer is best known for his discovery of varves.
Early life and family
De Geer was born in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 2, 1858. His family, originally Dutch nobility who had emigrated to Sweden in the early seventeenth century, included prominent industrialists and politicians. Both De Geer's father (Louis De Geer) and older brother were Prime Minister of Sweden, and De Geer himself was a member of the Swedish Parliament from 1900 to 1905.
De Geer's discovery of varves
De Geer graduated from Uppsala University in 1879, after joining the Swedish Geological Survey the previous year, and began what was to be his life's work studying the late Quaternary deposits and landforms of southern Sweden. De Geer's early studies of raised beaches, used to reconstruct glacio-isostatic sea level changes, and his mapping of glacial moraines to reconstruct the extent of the last Scandinavian ice sheet and its pattern of deglaciation (the particular type of moraine he studied is now referred to as De Geer moraine), were well received. However, De Geer is most famous for discovering varves and pioneering their use in geochronology.
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