1922 Encyclopædia Britannica/Forel, François Alphonse

FOREL, FRANÇOIS ALPHONSE (1841-1912), Swiss geographer, was born at Morges on Lake Geneva Feb. 2 1841. He was trained for and practised in the medical profession, but his life-interest was found in the lake on whose shore he lived, and, from that, in limnology, the science of lakes. The study of Lake Geneva in all its associations led him to that of geology, physics, biology, and anthropology, and he set forth the results of his researches in the three stately volumes of Le Léman (1892-1902). On the science of limnology more generally his standard work is Handbuch der Seenkunde (1901); in this connexion his investigations of the previously mysterious movements of lake-waters known as seiches call for special notice. Among other researches of Forel's, those in seismology and upon Swiss Alpine glaciers are noteworthy. He died at Morges Aug. 7 1912.