Volcanology: a scientific peculiarity of the Old Continent

With Anne Fournier, we will discover how volcanoes have been part of the European imagination since Greek and Roman mythology tried to make sense of the eruptions of Vesuvius and Santorini.

In the 20th century, Alfred Wegener's theory of continental drift led to an understanding of the mechanisms that cause not only eruptions but also earthquakes. Modern volcanology was boosted by the study of more than 150 volcanoes by Maurice and Katia Krafft and Haroun Tazieff, which led to an understanding of the gases involved in eruptive mechanisms.