Buwalda, John P. (John Peter), 1886-1954

Biography

John Peter Buwalda was born December 16, 1886, in Zeeland, Michigan, a town settled by Dutch immigrants, to which group his parents belonged. In 1897 the family moved to Yakima, Washington, where Buwalda graduated from high school in 1905. He began his undergraduate studies at the University of Washington, but after some time off from school, during which he worked in the Coeur d'Alene mines of Idaho and surveyed for the Northern Pacific Railway in the Cascade Mountains, he enrolled as a geology major at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1909. He received his BS with honors in 1912. His mentors were John C. Merriam (paleontology) and Andrew C. Lawson (geology). In 1915 he completed his doctorate and began an instructorship at Berkeley. In 1917 he married a Berkeley graduate, Imra Wann, and took up a teaching position at Yale, where he remained until 1921--with a year off (1918-1919) to work for the US Geological Survey in Washington. In 1921 he returned to Berkeley as professor of geology and also held the post of Dean of Summer Sessions.

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