Elisabeth Jérémine

Élisabeth Jérémine (28 October 1879 – 10 March 1964), born Elizaveta Vladimirovna Chernyaeva , was a Russian-French geologist and petrographer, specialising in rocks and meteorites. The Arête Jérémine, a large snow-covered ridge to the south of the Rallier du Baty Peninsula on the Kerguelen Islands, is named after her.

Early life and education Elizaveta Vladimirovna Chernyaeva was born on 28 October 1879 in Kamenka, in the Moscow Governorate of the Russian Empire.

In 1904, she graduated in Chemistry from the Department of Physics and Mathematics at the Bestuzhev Courses, the largest and most prominent women's higher education institution in Imperial Russia. She studied under geologist Professor Feodor Yulievich Levinson-Lessing. She was later employed as his assistant at the Department of Petrography at the Saint Petersburg State University. The 1912 British Science Association field excursion to Assynt outside the Inchnadamph Hotel, Jérémine to left in middle row with a scarf over her hat. In 1905, Jérémine studied optical methods in petrography with Louis-Claude Duparc at the University of Geneva. Whilst researching for her doctorate, she worked with Swiss geologist Professor Maurice Lugeon at the University of Lausanne. This research was published in a monograph she co-authored with Lugeon in 1911. In 1912, Jérémine was part of a British Science Association excursion to explore the geology of the Assynt area of Scotland, led by Ben Peach and John Horne, attended by many of the leading geologists of the day.

Jérémine returned to Russia after earning her doctorate. Following the October Revolution in 1917, she fled Russia for a time via Finland, using a false name and disguised as a governess. By 1920, she was in Paris listed as working at the Laboratoire de Mineralogie at the Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN).

Jérémine worked at first as a preparatrice for , introducing students to the study of rocks in thin sections under the microscope for the classes he taught at the Sorbonne. She supported Alfred Lacroix in his work on meteorites. It was led by the Soviet geochemist Alexander Fersman at Moscow University. She worked as his assistant.

Jérémine joined the Sorbonne’s petrography laboratory as a laboratory assistant to Professor Albert Michel-Lévy. In 1922, she was a delegate at the 13th International Geological Congress in Brussels. Between 1924 and 1932, she reclassified and tripled the size of the collection of endogenous rocks. In 1927, in collaboration with the mineralogist Jean Orcel, she played a significant role in the classification of meteorites. From 1928 onwards, she taught for around two months a year at the École Nationale Supérieure de Géologie in Nancy. thumb In the 1930s Jérémine was living in Jardin des Plantes area in the 5th arrondissement of Paris. In 1933, she was granted French nationality,

In 1937, Jérémine became head of the petrographic research department at the Muséum. In 1939, she was appointed a research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). She worked in the laboratory and conducted research alongside European scientists including Émile Argand and Pierre Pruvost. In her later years, she conducted detailed studies into the composition of meteoritic materials. Her scientific work combined Russian and French approaches to geology. In 1948, she was a delegate, alongside Jean Orcel, to the Standing Committee on Meteorites at the International Union of Geological Sciences in London.

In 1959, Jéremine was awarded the Prix Jérôme Ponti by the French Academy of Sciences.

La Fondation vaudoise Jérémine, Lugeon et Rabot pour la géologie was established in 2003 by the merger of earlier foundations (the Vaud Foundation for Geology, (founded by Jérémine); the Maurice Lugeon Foundation, and the Charles and Andrée Rabot Foundation) with the purpose of financially supporting the development of geological science at the University of Lausanne and at the Cantonal Museum of Geology (part of Naturéum) in Lausanne.