Andreas
Arzruni was a geologist who had a remarkable international career at a
time when it was not common to find Armenian names in this scientific
field.
Andreas Arzruni was born on November 27, 1847. He was the younger brother of Grigor Artzruni, the future founder of
Mshak,
the
groundbreaking Armenian daily published in Tiflis for almost four
decades (1872-1921). He studied in the universities of St. Petersburg,
Dorpat (nowadays Tartu), and Heidelberg. He graduated from Heidelberg in
1871 with a doctorate degree in chemistry. After living intermittently
in Tiflis from 1871-1875, he continued his academic career in Europe.
Arzruni
first taught at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1877-1883, where
he also was adjunct director of the Museum of Mineralogy of the
University. After a one-year tenure as extraordinary professor at the
University of Breslau (Wroclaw), from 1884-1898 he was professor, head
of the chair of Mineralogy, and dean of the Polytechnic School of
Aachen. After the death of his brother Grigor, he became the nominal
publisher of
Mshak
from 1895-1898.
In
the 1880s and 1890s, Arzruni organized a series of scientific
expeditions to the Ural Mountains in Russia, the Caucasus, different
European countries, as well as Chile, Guyana, Egypt, etcetera. He
dedicated two important expeditions to the study of the geological
structure and useful minerals of Armenia (1873-1875 and 1892). In 1894
he climbed to the top of Little Ararat and descended for the first time
to the crater of the extinguished volcano. He rejected the theory of
Humboldt and Abich that the Armenian volcanoes have a vertical
orientation. He used geological factors to explain the oscillations in
the level of the Lake Van, which was proven half a decade later. He also
foresaw the future of Dilijan as a sanatorium.
Arzruni
was the author of more than fifty papers published in scientific
journals from 1871 onwards. His studies were related to geological
chemistry, crystal chemistry, mineralogy, petrography, as well as
economics, philosophy, ethnology, and literature. His book
Physical Chemistry of Crystals
(1893),
in German, was later reprinted twice. He also participated in the
sessions of the International Congress of Geology (1897) and co-authored
the stratigraphic scheme of the Urals and the first geological maps of
the Southern Urals.
He
became corresponding member of the Royal Academy of Turin and the
Academy of Sciences of Bavaria and St. Petersburg. He first described
two minerals, groddeckite and utahite, and before his death he was
investigating a new mineral from Chile, which was named arzrunite after
him.
In
the winter of 1895-1896, while on a visit of inspection to the gold
fields of British Guyana, Andreas Arzruni had an attack of fever, and
this, together with consumption, forced him to spend the last year or so
of his life in sanatoria in Switzerland and on the Rhine. He passed
away at the age of fifty-one in Hohenhonnef (Germany) on September 22,
1898. His bust was erected at the entrance of the Polytechnic School of
Aachen.
