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.

In 1925 Buwalda was invited by Robert Millikan to take on the chairmanship of the newly formed Geology Division at Caltech. Upon his arrival in Pasadena in January of 1926 to begin his new duties, one of his first actions was to appoint his Berkeley colleague Chester Stock to a position in vertebrate paleontology. Stock would later succeed Buwalda as chairman of the division.

Buwalda was a meticulous administrator and devoted much time to setting up a curriculum in geology modeled largely on Berkeley's program. He eventually integrated the Seismological Laboratory--established in Pasadena in the 1920s under the aegis of the Carnegie Institution of Washington--into the Caltech geology division. He also devoted himself extensively to consulting, notably, in water supply, mining and oil exploration. One of his major involvements was with the National Park Service, and he served on the Yosemite National Park Board from 1929 until his death in 1954. He was active in many professional and civic organizations.

Buwalda's scientific career was focused in structural geology. His interests ranged from vertebrate paleontology to engineering geology and almost all aspects of Earth science.

Imra Wann Buwalda was a native of Berkeley, California. Her birth date is unconfirmed (ca. 1895), but she attended Berkeley High School and the University of California, graduating from the latter in 1917 with a bachelor's degree in law. (By her own explanation, the first year of law school at that time was equivalent to senior year for the AB degree.) After her marriage to John P. Buwalda in 1917, she became one of the first policewomen in the city of Washington, DC. She continued to advocate the presence of women on police forces and to work on social intervention as a means of crime prevention, especially in the cases of juveniles and women. She maintained a high level of activity in local social, civic and political organizations throughout her life. In her later years she wrote a history of the California Institute of Technology, which has remained unpublished. She and John Buwalda were the parents of four children.

From the guide to the John P. Buwalda and Imra Wann Buwalda Papers, 1907-1981, (California Institute of Technology. Caltech Archives)