Renier, Armand Marie Vincent Joseph (1876-1951)

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Geologist, palaeontologist, mining engineer born in Verviers on 26 June 1876 and died in Leuze on 9 October 1951.

Biography

Born in Verviers on 26 June 1867, Armand Renier studied Latin and Greek at the Jesuit College in his native town. He completed them with an additional year in mathematics. In 1900, he enrolled at the University of Liège as a civil mining engineer. Ranked first for the recruitment of engineers to the mining corps, he began his career on 18 December 1900, when he joined the mining administration. From then on, he was attached to the general service of various mining districts: Liège (1901-1903), Mons (1905), Charleroi (1905-1906) and again Liège from 1906 to 1910. He was subsequently promoted in the hierarchy of the mining corps to the rank of general inspector of mines. Thanks in particular to the intervention of Max Lohest, he was able to follow courses in geological engineering at the University of Liège and obtained his diploma in 1902 with a thesis on the geological analysis of the Malmédy region. He also drew up a stratigraphic map of this region.
He was awarded a travel grant and was allowed by the Mining Administration to use it to study at the Mining School in Clausthal (Lower Saxony, Germany). He made similar study trips to Austria-Hungary, Switzerland, England, France and Italy.

As a lecturer at the University of Liège from 1908 onwards for the course on mine exploitation, he was authorised to suspend his activity at the Corps des Mines between 1910 and 1912 in order to take over the chair of Elements of Palaeontology left vacant following the death of Julien Jean Joseph Fraipont. He kept this teaching position despite his return to the Corps des Mines and was appointed Professor in 1931.
When Michel-Félix Mourlon reached retirement age, Armand Renier succeeded him as head of the Geological Survey of Belgium, a position he held until his own retirement on 30 September 1942, the year in which he also became Emeritus Professor.

He successively became a corresponding member (27 December 1927) of the Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique , effective member in 1931 and finally, in 1942, director of the Class of Sciences and of the Academy. He was also president of the Société royale belge de Géographie, the Belgian Geological Society, the Scientific Society of Brussels and finally the Physical and Natural Sciences Societies.
Armand Renier was a member of the organising committee of the University Foundation and administrator of the National Fund for Scientific Research (NFWO), where he sat on seven committees.
He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Belgian journal Annales des Mines, of the Geological Commission of the Ministry of Colonies and of the Consultative Commission for Colonial Geology, and was also a director of the National Institute of Mines.

The recognition of his work led to his appointment as a member of international and foreign commissions: permanent member of the International Committee of Nomenclature, Paleobotany section, member of the International Commission of the Geological Map of Africa, corresponding and later effective member of the Geological Society of London, foreign corresponding member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and of the Academy of Sciences of Madrid. During the various meetings of the International Geological Congress, he was a member of the Commission for the Geological Map of Europe.
During his career, he was awarded several prizes, including the Prix décennal des Sciences minéralogiques for the period 1917-1926 for his publication Les gisements houillers de la Belgique and the de Wilde prize of the Académie des Sciences He was awarded a medal by the Royal Belgian Geographical Society and the French Association for the Advancement of Science, and was declared Doctor Honoris Causa by the University of Lille.
Finally, he was honoured with the First Class Civil Cross and Grand Officer of the Order of Leopold, the Order of the Crown and the Order of Leopold II.
A mineral was named after him, "Renierite".

He died in Leuze on 9 October 1951.

Work

He wrote more than 200 publications, including reports, conference notes and translations.
His scientific output is mainly concerned with stratigraphy and palaeontology of the coal era. He studied the coal layers of our country in detail and helped to promote the use of the palaeontological method in applied geology. He also addressed other fields such as: mining, the tectonic evolution of the Ardennes, regional geology and that of the ex-colony, etc. He also devoted himself to the study of plants from coal fields. He wrote about this in collaboration with Jean Émile Charles Timmermans: Flore et faune houillères de la Belgique.
In collaboration with his pupil Paul Fourmarier, he made observations in the Campine lowlands.

Science popularisation

He wrote the book Méthodes paléontologiques pour l'étude stratigraphique du terrain houiller about his research methods in stratigraphy.
The systematic application of these palaeontological methods to the Belgian coal deposits resulted in the publication of Echelles stratigraphiques du terrain houiller de la Belgique. This publication was updated several times.

History of science

He gave several lectures on the history of geological research in Belgium and the Congo, which were published in 1942 under the title L'age de la terre et autres essais. As a follow-up to these lectures, Renier was to devote several important studies in the years following World War II to the geological work of Robert de Limbourg and André-Hubert Dumont.

Publications

• List of publications: FOURMARIER, Paul, "Armand Renier", in Annuaire ARB, 1956, p. 42-78.
  

Bibliography

• CALEMBERT, L., "Renier, (Armand Marie V. J.)", in Biographie belge d'Outre-Mer, t. 7-A, 1973, col. 389-399.
• FOURMARIER, Paul, "Armand Renier", in Annuaire de l’Académie royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique, 1956, p. 2-41.
• GROESSENS, Éric, GROESSENS-VAN DYCK, Marie-Claire, "La géologie", in Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia/La Renaissance du livre, 2001, vol. 1 p. 284-285.
• HALLEUX, Robert, OPSOMER, Carmélia, VANDERSIMISSEN, Jan (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België van de Oudheid tot 1815, Bruxelles: Gemeentekrediet/Dexia, 1998, p.429
• LAWALRÉE, André, "La botanique", in Robert Halleux, Geert Vanpaemel, Jan Vandersmissen en Andrée Despy-Meyer (red.), Geschiedenis van de wetenschappen in België 1815-2000, Brussel: Dexia/La Renaissance du livre, 2001, vol. 1 p. 251.
• STOCKMANS, François, "Armand Renier", in Biographie Nationale, vol. 32, 1964, col. 611-615.