Conrad Schlumberger: The Physicist Who Taught Us to See Into the Earth

On October second, eighteen seventy-eight, Conrad Schlumberger was born in Guebwiller, in the Alsace region of France. He was a physicist and engineer, and his academic field was applied geophysics and the science of electricity.

Schlumberger's pioneering work involved measuring the earth's physical properties to map its subsurface. He had the fundamental idea that one could detect underground deposits by measuring variations in the earth's electrical resistivity or its natural electrical potential. In nineteen hundred and twelve, he conducted the very first experiments with electric logging by lowering an electrode down a well in France. This was the birth of an entirely new science: well-logging geophysics. His method proved revolutionary for the search for oil and minerals, as it gave geologists an "X-ray view" of the geological strata without having to take physical core samples. Conrad Schlumberger, together with his brother Marcel, founded the Schlumberger company, which became a world leader in the field and forever changed resource exploration across the globe.