Aleksander Guterch In Memoriam. History of Deep Seismic Soundings in Poland

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This volume is an expression of respect for the outstanding Man of Science, Professor Aleksander Guterch, our long-time boss and colleague.

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Aleksander Guterch, a professor at the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Sciences, was a prominent geophysicist, dealing with the structure of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, the “father” of seismic studies of the lithosphere in Poland.

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Poland has a quite special location on the geological map of Europe. The Trans-European Su-ture Zone (TESZ) runs through the center of Poland. It is one of the most prominent tectonic units in Europe, a contact zone between the old, Precambrian, East European Craton (EEC), and the younger Paleozoic platform. Recognizing the deep structure of this zone is a great scientific challenge. The best research tools for this type of task are experimental seismic methods. Aleksander Guterch has taken up this challenge since the 1960s and created a strong research team I have been a member for 45 years.

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A beautifully colored map of Poland and Lithuania by De Vitt, cartographer of Karol Gus-tav, from 1655, bought in Oslo in 1976 by the advice of Prof. Aleksander Guterch, is a very pleasant memory of 13 years of our close cooperation.

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Few geophysicists have been as productive and ground-breaking as Aleksander Guterch. Fascinated from an early age by the Earth in general and the lithosphere in particular, his field surveys and theoretical works have vastly expanded our knowledge of the structure and geodynamics of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle in Europe and in the polar regions.

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Professor Tomasz Janik sent out a letter that on December 28, 2023, Prof. Aleksander Guterch passed away. It was very sad news for all geophysicists and geologists who had known him personally; it was sad, too, for those who had not but had read his outstanding classical works. Aleksander Guterch was a world-class specialist and a wise, well-rounded, interesting and kind man.

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There are people you meet and never forget throughout your life, no matter how often or how long you interact. You just feel fortunate that fate brought you together with such individuals, allowing you to work with them and share the fruits of your labor. One such person was Prof. Aleksander Guterch.

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On 28 December 2023, just before the start of the new, 2024 year, I received sad news by e-mail from my colleague Dr. Tomasz Janik that Prof. Aleksander Guterch had passed away at the age of 87. Compared to the colleagues from the Institute of Geophysics of the Polish Academy of Science, with whom Prof. Guterch was working side-by-side for many years, I have no reminiscences related to everyday routine research work with him. However, for me personally this news was particularly sad, as it is one of the events marking the end of an important and very intensive period of my scientific career. This period is related to participation in the EUROPROBE program, in which Prof. Aleksander Guterch was one of the key persons.

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I first met Aleksander Guterch at the beginning of the POLONAISE Experiment in 1997. I had arrived in Warsaw several days before the rest of U.S. contingent and briefly met with Aleksander to discuss plans for the upcoming experiment.

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While thinking about Prof. Aleksander Guterch, but also Prof. Marek Grad and a whole range of geologists and geophysicists of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), it should be emphasized that the breathtaking mountains of the Western Carpathians significantly contributed to their scientific knowledge and interests.

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My memories of Aleksander Guterch are closely linked to his great personality, but also to his formative influence on the exploration of the lithosphere in Central Europe and the wider Eastern Alpine and Pannonian region using seismic methods.

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I first encountered Professor Aleksander Guterch in the spring of 2000 when I became involved with an international research group focusing on refraction experiments in central Europe. At that time, Professor Guterch led the group from the Department of Lithospheric Research at the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with Marek Grad from the University of Warsaw.

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The present author has been impressed by the scientific activity of Professor Aleksander Guterch since the early 90s of the last century, when the EUROPROBE Program (1992–2001) has been carried out. Professor was one of the key figures in this fruitful international scientific project.

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Professor Aleksander Guterch was habilitated in 1978 at the Faculty of Geological Prospection of the Stanisław Staszic Academy of Mining and Metallurgy in Krakow, Poland. The title of his habilitation thesis was: “Structure and physical properties of the crust and upper mantle of the Earth of the Polish area in the light of the results of deep seismic soundings”.

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Over the last two decades, the authors of these memoirs worked closely with the late Prof. Aleksander Guterch in organizing Polish polar research, preparing and implementing programs and projects for Arctic and Antarctic research, as well as in representing the Polish polar environment in various organizations and international forums.

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I worked with Professor Aleksander Guterch for seventeen years, first at the Association for Deep Geological Investigation, then also at the Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences, in the Department of Lithospheric Research.

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In Sękowa, the place Professor Aleksander Guterch was born, as well as in neighbouring localities Siary and Ropica Ruska (now Ropnica Górna), people had “always” been aware of the presence of oil. Rock oil, which comes from natural spills, often accompanied by exhalations of natural gas, has been observed in the Gorlice region for as long as its history goes.

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It is an interview of Mr. Andrzej Kobos with Professor Aleksander Guterch, published in the prestigious series “On the Ways of Scholars” by the Polish Academy of Arts and Sciences (Polska Akademia Umiejętności, PAU) in 2009. Thanks to the courtesy of Mr. Andrzej Kobos and the PAU Editors, we were able to post this interview below, in a slightly modified form

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The three authors of this note led most of their lives side-by-side with Olek Guterch and his wife Basia. We studied at the same faculty and worked at the same Institute. We were also friends all the time. We met so long ago that many of our companions have already passed away. Sadly, Olek is not with us either. We present here few remarks about Olek and also express our deep and hearty condolences to Basia, their two daughters and grandchildren.

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Looking over the family tree of Aleksander Guterch it’s no surprise why he chose the field of science he did. His interest in the mysteries of the Earth’s crust must have been inherited from his ancestors since nearly all of them were engaged in oil exploration.

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Growing up, we knew that Warsaw, our hometown, was a city that our Dad first arrived to when he was 18 years old, but we also learnt that his journey started much earlier.

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Many years ago, when I was in the studio of the brilliant graphic artist, Jan Maciej Kopecki (1945–2016), I saw fresh prints of a copperplate ex-libris, depicting an image of the map of the Kingdom of Poland of 1632 and, against its background, a 1917 Polish saber – this “victorious saber” of the Polish–Soviet War of 1920. It turned out that it was Aleksander Guterch’s exlibris and its symbolism was an excellent expression of the Professor’s interests, as stated in the membership declaration of the Association of the Lovers of Old Arms and Uniforms, submitted on 1 June 1982. This area of the Professor’s special interests in the field of militaria concerned military cartography and Polish white arms.

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Professor Aleksander Guterch was a well-known, highly respected scientist dealing with the structure of the Earth’s crust and upper mantle, the father of seismic surveying of the lithosphere. He was a pioneer of this type of research in polar regions and in many European countries, as well as an initiator of large-scale seismic programs.

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This Annex contains CV prepared by Aleksander Guterch himself in 2018, translated into English and slightly updated.

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This bibliography was compiled at the Department of Lithospheric Research and is also available on the Department’s website.

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