Background

Frédéric Boulvain has stuck to his guns: geology has always been his passion and there has never been any question of him following another path. The proof is his collection of minerals, which he began at the age of ten when Petrofina was giving away a rock sample with every tankful! So he inevitably went to ULB to study geology. As a young graduate, he first worked for an oil company, then specialised in sedimentology in Paris. After briefly working in the private sector, he became an assistant at ULB and finished his thesis in Paris, which was already on reefs. As a researcher, he joined the team of geologists responsible for creating the new geological map of Wallonia, a project launched in 1989.

He then became a geologist with tenure for the Geological Survey of Belgium (an organisation that was part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs) before joining the University of Liège in 1997 to head the Sedimentary Petrology Laboratory followed by the entire Department of Geology. Here, his passion for teaching was completely fulfilled: “We are the only ones to offer so much practical work in the field, with at least one month abroad; this is rare and this is the specificity of our master's degree. It has to be said, we have everything to hand. We can study everything within a radius of a few kilometres around Liège!”