Ludger Mintrop (1880 to 1956)

From 1907 to 1911 Ludger Mintrop (1880 to 1956) studied geophysics at the University of Göttingen. Under Emil Wiechert he experimented with artificially created earthquakes and built portable seismographs. In 1911 Mintrop gained his Doctorate with a thesis on the “Dispersal of the ground vibrations created by the mass pressures of a large gas engine”. With his company Seismos he is considered to be one of the pioneers in the search for oil reserves in the USA of the 1920s. This involved application of his method of causing artificial earthquakes with explosions, measuring the resulting vibrations in the upper strata and then drawing conclusions on the condition of the ground and potential deposits of raw materials.