Charles Barrois

Charles Barrois (1851-1939), French geologist, was born at Lille, France on April 21, 1851, and educated at the college in that town, where he studied geology under Professor Jules Gosselet. His first comprehensive work was "Recherches sur le terrain cretacé supérieur de l’Angleterre et de l'Irlande", published in the Mémoires de la societé geologique du Nord in 1876. In this essay the palaeontological zones in the Chalk and Upper Greensand of Britain were for the first time marked out in detail, and the results of Dr Barrois’s original researches have formed the basis of subsequent work, and have in all leading features been confirmed. In 1876 Dr Barrois was appointed a collaborateur to the French Geological Survey, and in 1877 professor of geology in the University of Lille.

In other memoirs, among which may be mentioned those on the Cretaceous rocks of the Ardennes and of the Basin of Oviedo, Spain; on the (Devonian) Calcaire d’Erbray; on the Palaeozoic rocks of Brittany and of northern Spain; and on the granitic and metamorphic rocks of Brittany, Dr Barrois proved himself an accomplished petrologist as well as palaeontologist and field-geologist.

In 1881 he was awarded the Bigsby medal, and in 1901 the Wollaston medal by the Geological Society of London. He was chosen member of the Institute (Academy of Sciences) in 1904.