Albert Heim

Albert Heim was a Swiss geologist born April 12, 1849, in Zurich, Switzerland, who died August 31, 1937, and who is renowned for his three-volume Geologie der Schweiz and for research on Alpine structure and mountain formation, tracing folding patterns and illustrating what were described as remarkable foldings and overthrust faultings; his 1878 book Mechanismus der Gebirgsbildung is regarded as a classic of structural geology, and he also studied glacial phenomena in the Alps. He served as professor of geology at the Zurich polytechnic school from 1873 and at the University of Zurich from 1875, and directed the Geological Survey of Switzerland from 1882. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Bern in 1884, was elected a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1905, was elected a foreign member of the Royal Society, won the Marcel Benoist Prize in 1923, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1904; the Heim coefficient of kinetic friction and the lunar ridge Dorsum Heim are named in his honor.