Otto Stutzer, German geologist, was the son of Professor Albert Stutzer. He studied geology and the natural sciences at the universities of Königsberg, München, Tübingen and Heidelberg and wasw awarded a doctoral degree in geology at the University of Tübingen in 1904. His thesis dealt with the geology of the neighbourhood of Gundelsheim am Neckar, Würtemberg. In 1905 he was appointed as an assistant at the Freiberg School of Mines and in subsequent years travelled to the United States, Canada, Africa, South America and the Soviet Union. He was promoted to associate professor of geology in 1913 and in 1927 became the first director of the Institute for Fuel Geology at Freiberg, and a full professor. His publications, most in German, included a report on the iron ores of Lapland (1907), a book on geological prospecting and mapping (1919), the geology of coal, graphite, diamonds, sulpher, phosphates and other non-metallic ores (1923), bush life (camping, diseases, hygiene, etc) in Africa and South America (1927), and oil in Europe (1931). In 1935 he became the first non-American president of the Society of Economic Geologists.
Stutzer appears to have visited sub-Saharan Africa, particularly the Katanga region of what is now the Democratic Republic of Congo, but it is not clear when or how many times. He published papers on the occurrence of glacial conglomerates in Katanga, which he correlated with the Dwyka Formation of South Africa (1911, 1913), and on the copper ores and other minerals of the region (1913). Another paper dealt with a graphite-rich gneiss from the hinterland of Lindi, German East Africa (now southern Tanzania).
Several of his papers dealt with the geology and mineralogy of southern Africa: On magmatic segregations of bornite (a sulphide of copper and iron) from Okiep, Namaqualand (Zeitschrift für Praktische Geologie, 1907); discussion of a paper by W. Maucher on the ore deposits at Tsumeb, in northern Namibia (Ibid, 1908); on the copper ores of the Khan mine near Swakopmund, Namibia (Metall und Erz, 1914); recent work on diamondiferous strata (Geologische Rundschau, 1915); and the chrome mine at Selukwe, near Gweru, Zimbabwe (Metall und Erz, 1914). Towards the end of his life he and Fr. Eppier published a substantial book, Die Lagerstätten der Edelsteine und Schmuksteine (The strata of gems and ornamental stones; Berlin, 1935, 567 pp), dealing with, among others, diamonds in southern Africa.
