Edward Suess

Edward Suess, known as ‘the dean of modern geology’, was born at 4 Duncan Terrace, Angel. His father was a Lutheran from Saxony and his mother was born to a distinguished Jewish family in Prague. The family moved from London back to central Europe when Edward was 10.

A keen Alpinist from a young age, it was in the Alps that Edward developed his passion for geology. He was appointed professor of palaeontology at the University of Vienna when he was 25, and professor of geology five years later. His observations of alpine rocks and fossils led him gradually to build up insights into the movement of continents over millions of years. It was he who coined the terms ‘Gondwanaland’ for the land mass connecting today’s South America, South Africa, India, and Australia, and the ‘Tethys Ocean’ for the great sea that lay between today’s Africa and Eurasia.

A campaigner against privilege from his student days, and always a liberal, in later life he served for 30 years as a deputy for Vienna in the Austrian Parliament. Though not a practising Jew, he aligned himself with the struggle against antisemitism which so tainted central Europe in his lifetime.