Hans Cloos

Hans Cloos (November 8, 1885 – September 26, 1951) was a prominent German structural geologist.

Gravestone of Cloos

Born in Magdeburg, Germany, Hans Cloos earned his doctorate at Freiburg in 1910, then worked in Indonesia and Namibia up until the start of First World War. During the war his geological skills were put to use along the western front.

Following the war, he began a study of plutons and their interior structure. In 1919 he became professor of geology at the University of Breslau. His younger brother, Ernst Cloos, who was born in 1898, would come to study geology at Breslau under his brother and later became a prominent geologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University.

In 1926 Cloos left Breslau to become professor of geology at the University of Bonn. He made additional geological trips to explore the Scandinavian region, England, and North America.

Professor Hans Cloos made pioneering studies of rock deformation, including granite tectonics. He employed scaled analogue models to study the physical mechanics of faulting, and examined how continents developed their structure. He was also noted for his artistic abilities, including music and draftsmanship.

Cloos died in Bonn, Germany in 1951.

Awards and honors

• The Hans Cloos medal, awarded annually by the IAEG to an engineering geologist of outstanding merit, was named after him.
• The wrinkle ridge Dorsum Cloos on the Moon is named after him.
• In 2006, Cloos was featured in the book Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology edited by Lauret E. Savoy, Eldridge M. Moores, and Judith E. Moores (Trinity University Press) which looks at how writing pays a tribute to the Earth's geological features.

Bibliography

• Der Mechanismus tiefvulkanischer Vorgänge, 1921.
• Memoirs: Gespräch mit der Erde, 1947; translated into English as Conversations with the Earth by E.B. Garside, 1953.