Marcian Bleahu

Marcian David (Matty) Bleahu (14 March 1924, in Brașov – 30 July 2019, in Bucharest) was a Romanian geologist, speleologist, geographer, alpinist, explorer, writer and politician.

He had more than 500 public appearances as a speaker, including the radio and the television; he was a pioneer in using the multimedia in conferences and was the author of the first geological map of Romania.

His books and his conferences have inspired generations of youth fond of nature, mountains, the exploration of the caves in Romania, and he has been, at the same time, a mentor for many Romanian geologists after the Second World War.

Marcian David Bleahu was born on March 14, 1924, in Brașov, in the family of a notary, but his maternal ancestry goes up to the prince Constantin Brâncoveanu.

After he retired from public activity, he continues to write articles and books in several fields, including music (he was known as a sophisticated melomaniac) and ecology.

The papers he published in this field are the first scientific source about the geology of the Maramureș, Bihor, Codru-Moma, and Metaliferic Mountains; he dedicated to each of them a monography.

[5] The results of his studies were synthesized in the book Global tectonics - Bucharest, 1983, Editura Științifică, (Tectonica globală), in two volumes, with over 1000 pages.

Despite the opposition of the scientific world of that time, which got quickly past any debate over ideas and arrived at the political questioning of the research results (the communist authorities forbade him to leave the country for 6 years, 1978 to 1984), Bleahu managed to thrust his theories, and he was invited in 1974, 1976, and 1978 to teach at the University of Geneva the first course in Global Tectonics; he also gave conferences in Vienna, Zurich, Freiburg, Basel, Potsdam, etc.

After the Romanian Revolution of December 1989, Bleahu founded the Ecologist Movement in Romania, thus putting into practice his professional belief regarding the protection of nature and of the environment.