Walter Herman Bucher was born in Dayton, Ohio, on 12 March 1888 and went to Frankfurtam-Main, Germany, where he was educated, and where his father, a Methodist minister, taught at a professional school for ministers. He was interested in natural sciences and entered the University of Heidelberg, where he graduated in 1907 specializing in zoology. He then specialized in palaeontology and received his doctorate in 1911, coming under the influence of the structural geologist, Wilhelm Salomon.
He returned to the United States to live in Cincinnati, attending lectures in the Geology Department at the University there. He joined the staff of the University and became a Professor in 1927, Research Professor in 1929, and Head of the Department of Geology in 1937. In 1940 he accepted a chair at Columbia University, specializing in tectonic geology, and continuing his research in sedimentation and structural geology.
Honorary doctorates were conferred on him by Princeton University in 1947, Columbia University in 1957, Durham University, England, in 1962, and the University of Cincinnati in 1963. He was President of the Ohio Academy of Sciences in 1935, President of the New York Academy of Sciences in 1946, and President of the Geological Society of America in 1955, among other very distinguished positions which he held during these years.
Professor Bucher received many other honours, including the Leopold von Buch Medal of the Deutsche Geologische Gesellschaft in 1955, and the R. A. F. Penrose Medal of the Geological Society of America in 1960—awards of the highest form of recognition presented by these societies.
He made great contributions as a teacher who exemplified the highest ideals of his profession. He published a number of geological papers, and his investigations of fracture patterns and mobile belts of the earth provided the subject for his book The deformation of the Earth’s crust.
He was a valued member of our Society, and one of the most widely known, highly admired, and best loved American scientists of his generation. He died in Houston, Texas, on 19 February 1965, and is survived by his widow and four children.
