Pierre Pruvost

Pierre Eugene Marie Joseph Pruvost was a French geologist born August 1, 1890, in Raismes, France, who died June 5, 1967, and who became a lecturer and professor of applied geology at the University of Lille in 1922, succeeded Charles Barrois there in 1926, and later held a professorship at the Sorbonne from 1950 to 1967. He specialized in the fossil fauna and flora of the coal basins of Europe, and observed that plant debris produced the coal itself while the edges of coal basins carried fish fossils and were associated with oil shale. He served as president of the Geological Society of France in 1948 and 1963, was made an Officer of the Legion of Honor in 1949, was elected to the Academy of Sciences in Paris in 1954, became an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1963, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1959.