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The first geological map of the Republic of Colombia, published for the Bogotá Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales.
The map was created by Victor Eduard Oppenheim. Oppeneim was a geologist, engineer, anthropologist, archeologist, ethnologist, linguist, author, poet, and perhaps the last of the great terrestrial explorers.
Born in 1906 in Latvia, Victor Oppenheim spent much of his early life in China and other parts of East Asia with his father, a civil and mining engineer, and his mother. After his father's untimely death, Victor and his mother returned to Latvia.
Oppenhiem was educated at the University of Caen. In 1927, after graduation, Oppenheim was employed by Ludovick Barreau, an engineering and mining consultant firm in Paris. In 1929, the company sent Oppenheim to South America. During the next twenty years, he explored and geologically mapped the continent, usually as a consulting geologist for the countries he was exploring and mapping. His extensive travels through southern Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, and eastern Peru resulted in the first geological maps for each of those countries.
In 1944, Victor Oppenheim completed the first geological map of an entire continent, making him the only 20th century geologist to have single-handedly mapped an entire continent, completing the first geological map of South America since its discovery 450 years earlier. Among his other many achievements in South America were the discovery of the largest known coal reserve in the world at El Cerrejon and a large petroleum deposit at Cusiana, both in Colombia; the naming of a mountain range in eastern Ecuador, the Sierra de Cutucu; and the discovery of a hitherto unknown culture in Guarija, Colombia.
Victor Oppenheim continued his explorations and geological work after he left South America and established a consulting company in Dallas, Texas. He completed extensive field work in Latin America, Mexico, West Africa, as well as in the United States in Arkansas, Alaska, New Mexico, and Texas.
The author of over 120 scientific papers, Victor Oppenheim has been honored by the Explorers Club, the American Institute of Professional Geologists, the American Institute of Mining, Metallurgical, and Petroleum Engineers, and the Dallas Geological Society. He was awarded an honorary doctorate from the country of Ecuador, and has been called the "Father of Colombian Geology."
Oppenheim died in Dallas, Texas in December 2005.
