Dr. Verners Aleksandrs Zans was a Latvian geologist with wide interests who worked as an associate professor at the University of Riga until 1944. After the Second World War, he and his family were interned in a camp for displaced persons near Hamburg, where they lived until Zans was appointed government geologist in Jamaica, at the head of the modern Geological Survey Department. Zans and his family arrived in Jamaica in October 1949. The Survey grew and flourished under Zans. His work in Jamaica was diverse, including studies of mineral deposits, bauxite genesis, karst hydrology, and the marine physiography of the near shore. Zans formulated a new theory of bauxite formation, alumina-rich deposits derived from older, but topographically higher, beds accumulating in karst depressions on the surface of the mid-Cenozoic White Limestone Group. Under his leadership the Survey published the 1958 1:250,000 provisional geological map of Jamaica, the first new map of the island since 1865. Zans died unexpectedly in September 1961.