Born in Warsaw of a Russian father who perished in the early days of the First World War, Tazieff and his mother moved first to Saint Petersburg and then, with the outbreak of the revolution, to Belgium, where he grew up in very modest circumstances. After serving in the Belgian army and resistance during the Second World War, he completed his studies in geology and agronomy and went to the Belgian Congo to work as a geologist and mining engineer. While there, he wrote several scientific papers on the alkaline igneous rocks of the African volcanoes, but after experiencing the 1948 eruption of Kituro he became completely devoted to studies of active volcanism. His first book, Cratères en feu, published in 1951 (and in English the following year as Craters of Fire), was an immediate popular success thanks to the sense of adventure and grandeur of natural forces his writing conveyed. In the following years he produced a total of 23 books and six films of extraordinary artistry and popular appeal.
After returning to Belgium, Tazieff taught at the University of Brussels and later at the Universities of Paris and Orsay. In 1957 he set up the Centre de Volcanologie in Belgium and in 1961 organized the International Institute of Volcanology at Catania, Sicily. He was director of the volcanological laboratory at the Institut de Physique du Globe in Paris and later established a laboratory under the French national research agency CNRS at Gif-sur-Yvette. His ability to sample erupting lavas close to their source resulted in some of the best gas analyses and temperature measurements ever obtained. Some of the instruments he and his team designed for this work are now widely used in science and industry. But although his interests mainly centred on understanding eruptive mechanisms, he always maintained a primary concern for the human aspects of natural hazards.
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