Hans Stille

Who was Hans Stille?

Hans Wilhelm Stille was an influential German geologist working primarily on tectonics and the collation of tectonic events during the Phanerozoic.

He was born in Hanover, Germany, and was educated in Göttingen. For his graduate studies he studied mountain building in the region of the Teutoburg Forest. After graduation he served with the royal Prussian geological institute, making photographic surveys. His work would influence his future career, as he focused on tectonics.

Hans Stille served as professor of geology at the University of Göttingen. Working from the University of Göttingen and, later, the University of Berlin, Stille brought together a table of around 50 geosynchronous orogenic phases that occurred during the Phanerozoic Eon. In the framework developed by Stille, these phases occurred as small pulses during which a portion of the Earth's crust was stabilised, and the continents were enlarged. In 1924 he suggested a tectonic model for the continents that postulated alternating periods of orogenic and epeirogenic episodes.

Further work studying internal details of the crust led Stille to expand the geosyncline concept.