1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Favre, Jean Alphonse

FAVRE, JEAN ALPHONSE (1815–1890), Swiss geologist, was born at Geneva on the 31st of March 1815. He was for many years professor of geology in the academy at Geneva, and afterwards president of the Federal Commission with charge of the geological map of Switzerland. One of his earliest papers was On the Anthracites of the Alps (1841), and later he gave special attention to the geology of Savoy and of Mont Blanc, and to the ancient glacial phenomena of those Alpine regions. His elucidation of the geological structure demonstrated that certain anomalous occurrences of fossils were due to repeated interfoldings of the strata and to complicated overthrust faults. In 1867 he published Recherches géologiques dans les parties de la Savoie, du Piémont et de la Suisse voisines du Mont Blanc. He died at Geneva in June 1890.

His son Ernest Favre (b. 1845) has written on the palaeontology and geology of Galicia, Savoy and the Fribourg Alps, and of the Caucasus and Crimea.