Grigore Cobălcescu

In January 1864, he became a professor at the University of Iași, in the philosophy faculty's physiology and geology department; he had begun teaching a course on natural sciences there in April 1862, as a volunteer.

[1] He was one of the few who protested against the commercial convention with Austria-Hungary, which he claimed "transforms Romania into a veritable colony of this empire", and resigned his seat following its adoption in 1875.

The first, published at Iași in 1883, introduced the modern study of the Neogene to Romania; first described the bivalve genus Psilodon, later called Prosodacna by Tournouer; and made observations regarding the presence and distribution of hydrocarbons.

[1] Before the Sarmatian stage of the Miocene was proposed, Cobălcescu, drawing on the fossils at Repedea and the type of water in which they formed, suggested several subdivisions of this stage (Volhynian, upper and lower Bessarabian) and argued that the Moldavian Platform evolved as a carbonate platform, a view still accepted by some researchers.

He laid the basis for the scientific museums in the geography and geology faculty, first by setting aside rooms for his personal collections, and then by purchasing some 10,000 rocks and fossils from a German firm, for use in teaching and research.