Great Geologists | 107
Wadi Doan in the Hadhramaut region of Yemen.
In 1953, he started work in south-western Arabia, now
Yemen, and parts of Oman. His work in this region was
to make his name in Middle Eastern geology and involved
field work in some of the most remote and at that time
hostile locations. It began with a one-man survey of the
island of Socotra, off the Horn of Africa in the Arabian
Sea, and was followed by surveys in the Hadhramaut
region. The geology here is impressive, but the
stratigraphy was difficult to unravel and required several
field seasons of effort in order to reach the first modern
description of the geology of the region. Although IPC
abandoned the idea of petroleum exploration in south-
western Arabia in 1961, Beydoun was able to publish
the results of his field work in a seminal monograph:
The Stratigraphy and Structure of the Eastern Aden
Protectorate. This work also formed the basis for his
doctorate, obtained from the University of Oxford.
In 1963, he returned to Lebanon to take up the post of
assistant professor at AUB, but in 1966 returned to the
industry leading Marathon Oil’s evaluations of Middle
Eastern geology. Beydoun enjoyed both the academic life
of teaching students and writing papers, and the practical
work of being an industry geologist. From 1970, he was
able to enjoy the best of both worlds, as both a professor
at AUB and an advisor to Marathon.
With the onset of civil war in Lebanon in 1975, Beydoun
had many difficulties to overcome. Despite the horrors
around him, he continued to lecture and guide students
in the Geology Department of AUB. His teaching and
fortitude in the face of adversity inspired many students,
several of whom went on to hold key positions in the oil
industry around the Middle East, providing Beydoun with
a network of contacts to facilitate his regional research.
His knowledge of Middle Eastern geology was
encyclopedic, possessing a superb memory of the
results from wells drilled decades before, as well as the
rocks he had personally encountered in his many years of
field work. This placed Beydoun in the enviable position
of conducting the first regional synthesis of Middle
Eastern geology, published in 1988 and updated in 1991,
with an emphasis on the importance of plate tectonics.
Both books remain essential reading for geologists of the
Middle East today.