Wilfrid Kilian

Charles Constant Wilfrid Kilian (15 June 1862 - 30 September 1925) was a French geologist, paleontologist, and professor at the University of Grenoble where he was a specialist on Alpine geology.

His father Conrad was a pastor with part Irish ancestry (with an interest in educating deaf-mutes, working for the Boers) and his mother Clémentine was the daughter of Charles Cuvier, a pastor and historian at Strasbourg from the Montbéliard family which included George Cuvier.

He studied geology at the University of Sorbonne, becoming a contemporary and lifelong collaborator of Emile Haug and travelled around Europe, sometimes with Marcel Bertrand, studying the Lure mountains for his 1888 thesis under Edmond Hébert.

He worked as a lecturer at the University of Clermont-Ferrand but was persuaded by Bertrand to apply for the position of professor of geology at the University of Grenoble in 1892, a position made vacant upon the death of Charles Lory.

He received the Gaudry gold medal of the French geological society in 1921.