Walter Herman Bucher

Bucher, Walter Herman

 

Born Mar. 12, 1888; died Feb. 17, 1965. American geologist. Professor at the University of Cincinnati (from 1925); professor at Columbia University (from 1940).

Bucher’s basic works are in the area of tectonics. He formulated the pulsation hypothesis, which proposes that the history of the earth is an alternation of universal periods of compression and expansion of the earth’s crust. Bucher’s ideas on the formation of the Appalachian fold under pressure of a granite-gneiss dome raised at the end of the Paleozoic period in the Piedmont region, as well as several general rules of tectonic processes that he established, are still significant.

WORKS

The Deformation of the Earth’s Crust. Princeton, 1933.
“Versuch einer Analyse der grossen Bewegungen der Erdkruste.” Geologische Rundschau, 1939, vol. 30, nos. 3–4.