Robert Scheibe, German geologist and mineralogist, studied at the universities of Jena, Göttingen and Halle and obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Halle in 1882 with a thesis entitled Krystallographische untersuchung des Lupinins und seiner Salze. He then became an assistant geologist at the Royal Prussian Geological State Institute (1885-1907), worked at the Bergakademie, Berlin (1907-1916), and taught at the Technical University, Berlin. He was promoted to professor in Berlin in 1895. From 1916 to his death he was employed in the Department of Mining. He took part in many research trips and geological congresses and published many papers on mineralogy and crystallography.
In 1888 Scheibe published two brief notes (in German) on the gold-bearing rocks of Otjimbingwe, German South West Africa (now Namibia) and on the mineral tourmaline in copper ore from the Luderitz area, in the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Geologischen Gesellschaft. In 1908 he spent a year's leave in Namibia during which he explored the diamond deposits in the southern Namib. In 1910 he presented the South African Museum, Cape Town, with a series of rock samples from the volcanic pipes of Geitsi Gubib (Brukkaros Mountain). Between 1903 and 1910 he wrote a number of papers on the diamond deposits of Namibia. These included a paper on "blue ground" (the matrix of diamond-bearing volcanic pipes) in German South West Africa (Deutsche Kolonial Zeitung, 1903); a comparison between the blue ground of Namibia and that of South Africa (Programm der Königlichen Bergakademie, Berlin, 1906-1907); three papers on the nature of the diamond fields in Namibia, the occurrence of diamonds and blue ground in the territory from a geological perspective, and the Luderitz diamond area (Verhandlungen des Deutschen Kolonialkongresses, Berlin, 1910); and a contribution on the nature and significance of diamond occurrences in Namibia (Naturwissenschaftliche Wochenschrift, 1911).
In 1914 Scheibe spent a year's leave in Bogota, Colombia, during which he investigated deposits of salt, coal and emeralds. He was prevented from returning to Germany by the outbreak of World War I (1914-1918) and only returned in 1920. Meanwhile he had become an honorary professor at Bogota National University. Unable to adapt to conditions in post-war Germany he returned to Colombia in 1921 and died there two years later. He published (in Spanish) on the geology of that country in 1922 and after his death a compilation of official geological studies in Colombia between 1917 and 1933 was published (in Spanish) under his name (Bogota, 1933).
