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Obituary
Jacques Touret (1936–2024)
Jacques Touret (Fig. 1) passed away on 11 March 2024 in Paris
at the age of 88 after a long illness. He is survived by his wife Lydie
Touret, four children, and 14 grandchildren. Jacques was a pioneer
in the field of fluid inclusions and its applications in high-grade
metamorphic rocks. In his retrospective paper in Geoscience Fron-
tiers (Touret, 2014), Jacques described himself as someone who
dedicated ‘‘. . .a great part of my scientific life to the study of minute
bubbles in rocks issued from the most extreme depths of our mother
Earth”. He will be remembered as a very amiable person and his
infectious enthusiasm for fluid inclusions.
Jacques Léon Robert Touret was born on January 2, 1936, in
Fumay (Ardennes, France). He studied at the Ecole Nationale
Supérieure de Géologie (ENSG) in Nancy and the University of
Nancy and obtained a MSc degree in engineering geology in
1958. From 1959 onwards, he was a lecturer at Ecole Nationale
Supérieure de Géologie and started his PhD on the geology, petrol-
ogy, and geochemistry of the Bamble area in southern Norway,
with Prof. Marcel Roubault (director of the ENSG) as his formal
supervisor and Prof. Tom F.W. Barth (Mineralogical-Geological
Museum in Oslo) as his actual supervisor. His interest in Norwe-
gian geology was triggered in 1957 when he completed a study
internship at the Sydvaranger iron ore mine in northern Norway.
He travelled by boat along the Norwegian coast to reach the mine,
affording him the opportunity to observe the pristine Caledonian
outcrops, which stimulated his desire to do petrology research in
Norway. Inspired on the experimental petrological work done by
H.G.F. Winkler (Universität Göttingen), whom he visited several
times, Jacques proposed that the formation of granulites in south-
ern Norway was related to the influx of CO 2-rich fluids. Bernard
Poty’s development of the heating-freezing stage enabled Jacques
to identify CO 2 fluid inclusions in the granulites, thereby validating
his hypothesis. These findings were subsequently published in
Lithos in 1971 (Touret, 1971). It was during his PhD research that
Bernard Poty, Alan Weisbrod, and Jacques made Nancy a world-
renowned place for geological fluid research.
Jacques was appointed as an associate professor in structural
geology at the Université de Nancy after he completed his PhD in
1969, followed by an appointment as a professor in petrology at
the Université Paris 7 in 1972. In 1980, he became professor at
the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, where he established an inter-
national centre of expertise for fluid inclusion studies. On his ini-
tiative, a prototype Raman microspectrometer (Dilor Microdil 28)
was installed in 1984, which was developed into a routine instru-
ment for quantitative fluid inclusion analysis by Ernst Burke.
Throughout his tenure at the Vrije Universiteit, Jacques hosted
many international researchers (colleagues and PhD students) at
his laboratory to do fluid inclusion research.
The fluid inclusion laboratory at the Vrije Universiteit was
unique in many ways. The room of the heating-freezing stage
was directly connected to Jacques’ office through an adjoining
door, making Jacques’ office an integral part of the laboratory. This
door was never locked, allowing students and visitors always to
have access to his extensive library. Notable was the massive
leather chair in his office, which was used by Jacques (and some-
times by his students and visitors) to take a nap. Behind his desk
on the wall was a big portrait of Henry Sorby, who was the first sci-
entist to emphasise the significance of fluid inclusions in minerals
(Sorby, 1858). Jacques had a great notion of science history high-
lighting the contributions of significant figures in fluid inclusion
research, including, for example, Henry Sorby, Ferdinand Zirkel,
Hermann Vogelsang, Ed Roedder, Georgi Lemmlein, and Bernard
Poty. During his fluid inclusion course at the Vrije Universiteit,
he often organised a student tour to the Teylers Museum in Haar-
lem, which is the oldest science museum in The Netherlands, and
where his wife Lydie was working as a researcher. Most impressive
was Jacques’ extensive collection of fluid inclusion samples from
all over the world. Opposite his office, in the corridor, was a display
of detailed fluid inclusion drawings, illustrating Jacques’ research
approach that any fluid inclusion study should start with detailed
petrographic descriptions (Fig. 2) and the identification of so-called
groups of synchronous inclusions.
At Jacques’ retirement in 2001, Lithos published a special fluid
inclusion issue dedicated to him. In the editorial of this issue, the
guest editors wrote that after his retirement, ‘‘he will continue his
work on science for many years to come”. This was not an under-
statement. He moved back to France and became a volunteer for
ABC Mines (Association des Amis de la Bibliothèque et des Collec-
tions de l’Ecole des Mines de Paris), being involved with giving lec-
tures and organizing geology excursions. As a board member of
French Committee on the History of Geology, he wrote numerous
publications on the history of geological research. In addition, he
remained research-active and published numerous papers until
he was not able to do this anymore because of his illness. His last
paper was published in July 2022 (Touret et al., 2022). Geoscience
Frontiers published a special issue in 2014 (Volume 5, Issue 5) in
his honor, titled, ‘‘The role of fluids in the lower crust and upper
mantle: A tribute to Jacques Touret” where, in the opening article
titled, ‘‘How everything started: A retrospective” Jacques traced
the history of his education and career, breakthrough discovery
of CO 2 inclusions in granulites and also his career devoted to the
study of fluids in the deep Earth (Touret, 2014).
