Ignaz (Ignace) Venetz (1788 — 1859) was a Switzerland engineer, natural history, and glaciologist; as one of the first scientists to recognize as a major force in shaping the earth, he played a leading role in the foundation of glaciology.
Biography
Venetz was of a family long settled in the
Valais, where he worked as
Swiss canton engineer first for Valais and then for
Vaud. As cantonal engineer he directed the ultimately unsuccessful attempt to drain the ice-dammed lake that had formed following the volcanic winter of 1816 high in the Val de Bagnes; the ice dam failed catastrophically on 16 June 1818.
[Jean M. Grove, Little Ice Ages, Ancient and Modern (as The Little Ice Age 1988) rev. ed. 2004:161, and note 12.] He worked primarily in the
Valais canton area of the western
Alps. In 1821 he completed the first draft of his work "Mémoire sur les Variations de la température dans les Alpes de la Suisse", suggesting that much of
Europe had at one point in the past been covered by glaciers. The book was published in 1833 after additional research in the Swiss Alps,
[ Ein 'Nationales Forschungsprojekt' über Klimaänderungen in den Alpen – vor 180 Jahren! (A "National Research Project" on climate change in the Alps - 180 years ago). University of Berne, Switzerland). Accessed on March 8, 2008.] seven years before Louis Agassiz published his famous work
Étude sur les glaciers (Study on Glaciers).
