Bucher, Walter Herman

(b. Akron, Ohio, 12 March 1889; d. Houston, Texas, 17 February 1965)

geology.

During his youth Bucher and his parents, Maria Gebhardt and August Bucher, moved to Germany. He received his higher education at the University of Heidelberg, graduating in 1911 with a Ph.D. in geology. He returned to America shortly thereafter and joined the faculty of the University of Cincinnati, remaining there for twenty-seven years. In 1940 Bucher moved to Columbia University as professor of structural geology and became chairman of the geology department in 1950. Six years later, having gained emeritus status, he became a consultant to Humble Oil and Refining Company in Houston, Texas, where he was employed until his death.

While at the University of Cincinnati, Bucher produced his major work, The Deformation of the Earth’s Crust (1933), an explanation of the origin of orogenic belts. It was an attempt to compile “all essential geological facts of a general nature that bear on the problem of crystal deformation and to derive from them inductively a hypothetical picture of the mechanics of diastrophism….” Tectonic observations were presented as carefully worded generalizations that Bucher called laws; interpretations of the laws were designated opinions. From these building blocks he constructed a theory. Bucher’s thesis combines the contraction of the earth by cooling with gravitational forces. Such contraction leads to global fractures of the crust. These lesions, which rise from several hundred kilometers under the earth’s mantle and penetrate the crust, allow the escape of heat, volatile substances, and water vapor to the surface. This weakens the crust along the fractures, causing it to form welts and furrows.

Bucher believed that the earth’s crust was divided by associated linear swells and basins, or welts and furrows (crustal folds). Since the thickened sediments of furrows, uplifted in the formation of welts, are subjected to the force of gravity, their own weight and the resulting stress cause them to buckle into folds or to collapse and spread, producing the sort of rock deformation associated with mountainous regions. Support for his theory was provided by numerous experiments with Plasticine, glass (Christmas tree ornaments), and wax models of the earth, which he described in his book.

Extensions of this theory are presented in “The Role of Gravity in Orogenesis” (1956) and in the symposium The Crust of the Earth (1955). In addition to these broad theoretical endeavors, Bucher published many articles on geophysics and structural geology. His essential reliance on radical forces for the orogenic mechanism is now less popular than theories of primarily tangential movement, such as a continental drift.

Bucher received an honorary D.Sc. from Princeton University in 1947, the William Bowie Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 1955, and the Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1960. He served as president of the Geological Society of America in 1954 and was a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Ohio Academy of Sciences.

Bucher married Hannah E. Schmid in 1914. They had two sons and two daughters.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Among Bucher’s works are The Deformation of the Earth’s Crust (Princeton, 1933; repr. New York, 1957); “The Role of Gravity in Orogenesis,” in Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, 67 (1956), 1295–1318; “Deformation in Orogenic Belts,” in The Crust of the Earth, Arie Poldervaart, ed. (New York, 1955), pp. 343–368; “Continental Drift Versus Land Bridges,” in Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History, 99 , no. 8 (1952), 72–258; “Volcanic Explosions and Overthrusts,” in Transactions of the American Geophysical Union, 14th Annual Meeting (1933), pp. 238–242; and “Geologic Structure and Orogenic History of Venezuela,” in Memoirs. Geological Society of America, no. 49.

II. Secondary Literature. Details of Bucher’s life are in Current Biography, XVIII (1957), 84–86; and in Modern Men of Science, J. Green, ed. (New York, 1966), pp. 74–75.

Martha B. Kendall