He contributed to studies on the folding and movement of layers of the earth based on stratigraphy.

He went to study geology at the University of Geneva and received a doctorate in 1884 after which he taught at the Collège in Montreux.

Completing his habilitation in Lausanne in 1891, he went to Heidelberg and then became a professor at the Neuchâtel Academy where he began a geology institute.

[2] Schardt noted the prealps and some Jurassic strata were resting atop younger tertiary flysch.

Schardt was the first to suggest that parts of the prealps were formed elsewhere and had been shifted (termed as allochthonous) and noted as tectonic outliers.