A Sixth Sense: The Life and Science of Henri-Georges Doll, Oilfield Pioneer and Inventor - Hardcover

Oristaglio, Michael; Dorozynski, Alexander

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1590201744 ISBN 13: 9781590201749

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2009

Synopsis

In March 1940, with Europe at war, French army lieutenant Henri-Georges Doll came to the U.S. embassy in Paris to give a deposition. Doll was an artillery commander, a graduate of France'sgrandes écoles of science, engineering, and service. He had been mobilized to the front at the start of the war, then quickly recalled to Paris to work on a secret device for detecting the deadly land mines being planted by the German army on a vast new scale. But Doll's deposition that day had nothing to do with the war. He had come to testify in a patent lawsuit pending in Houston, Texas. The case was Schlumberger Well Surveying Corporation v. Halliburton Oil Well Cementing Company: It marked one of the first great industrial battles for control of the technology of oil and gas exploration. When the German army marched into Paris three months later, Doll escaped to America, where he developed his new mine detector for the U.S. army, then settled in a small Connecticut town to become one of the most prolific inventors of the twentieth century. His sixth sense for applied science would help create the modern technology of seeing underground using electrical signals and sound waves, technology that enabled the explosive growth of oil production after the war and built oilfield services giant Schlumberger.
    A Sixth Sense is the heroic story of an extraordinary French-American scientist whose inventions and style of research changed the arc of the oil industry.

About this title

From the Inside Flap:

HENRI-GEORGES DOLL was a true pioneer of modern applied science - one of the great but little known French and American inventors of the 20th century. A SIXTH SENSE is the story of a man at the core of scientific innovation, a brilliant mind who blazed a trail for much of what we know today about remote sensing and oil exploration.

"When I got out of the Navy at the end of World War II, I decided that when somebody walked into my office I would never again stand up because he had a higher rank than me. Mr. Doll was the kind of man for whom, when he walked into your office, you just naturally stood up." --American physicist Jay Tittman

About the Author:

Michael Oristaglio, a geophysicist, has worked as a research scientist and manager in the oil industry for the past twenty-five years. He lives in Newtown, Connecticut.

About this edition

• Publisher: Abrams Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1590201744
• ISBN 13: 9781590201749
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 336