Economic Geology: Principles and Practice

Professor Emeritus at Technical University Carolo-Wilhelmina at Braunschweig in Germany (my life-long affiliation since having been called in 1984), PhD (Vienna), Fellow of The African Geological Society, Fellow of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy: AusIMM), Member of IOM3/Institution of Mining and Metallurgy (U.K.), Society of Economic Geologists (SEG), the Geological Society of America (GSA), the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), the Society of Geology Applied to Mineral Deposits (SGA) and Corresponding Member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (life-long since 1992).
Aspirations for outdoors work and adventure made me study geology, petrology, mineralogy and palaeontology at the University of Vienna (1959-64). Thereafter, meeting my aspirations to work in industry, Profs. W.E. Petrascheck (Economic Geology) and E. Clar (Engineering Geology) entrusted me with a doctoral research project: Geological underground mapping, lithostratigraphy and synthesis of a lignite basin and mining district.
Immediately after promotion (PhD 1966), a resource conglomerate in Austria employed me in order to provide geological services to all their mines and quarries. In 1970, I was offered the position of Senior Geologist at Gunpowder and Mammoth copper mines (Mt. Isa region, Queensland, Australia), followed by exploration for coal in the Bowen Basin, and copper near Duchess. Called away again (1972), I joined the Geological Survey of Rwanda (Africa) as the economic geologist in a small team; the main task was geological mapping of tungsten and tin mines, both underground and open pit operations, structural and genetic modelling, and developing concepts for exploration. In 1974, my mentor Prof. Petrascheck recalled me as a postdoc in charge of overseas projects and related teaching at the University of Mining (Austria). This brought about that I acquired the "Habilitation" in Applied Geology (the academic qualification of autonomous teaching at university, in 1976), and an Associate Professorship in 1980. During this period, my work place was mainly Africa but projects called me to Arabia, India, Australia, the Americas and Turkey. In Kenya, for example, I led a major mapping and greenfield exploration project of extensive areas in the Tsavo (main resource: gemstones) and South Coast regions (an apatite-REE carbonatite and rift-related Ba-Pb-Zn veins).
In 1984, I accepted a full professorship of Applied Geology at the Technical University of Braunschweig (Germany). Although already in 1966, my first job did include complex reserve estimation, stability and water problems in various mines, teaching students majoring in geology, ecology and civil engineering considerably deepened my grasp of the theoretical background. Soon, I revived my work in Africa and as a frame, I established an international network within UNESCOs International Geological Correlation Program (IGCP) with the title "Geological Evolution and Metallogeny of the Mesoproterozoic Kibara Belt, Central Africa" (1987-91). At the same time, I designed and executed research projects that integrated economic geology with engineering geology, hydrogeology and environmental management. This sharpened my skills in environmental issues of mining.