Bernhard Studer

Bernhard Studer was a Swiss geologist born August 21, 1794, in Buren an der Aare, Switzerland, who died May 2, 1887, in Bern, Switzerland, and who was initially educated for the clergy before turning to science, became a mathematics teacher at the Bern gymnasium in 1815, and was appointed the first professor of geology when the University of Bern was established in 1834, later organizing the Swiss geological survey in 1859 and leading it until his death. He conducted detailed investigations of the western Alps, produced geological maps of Switzerland with Arnold Escher von der Linth, and published Beytrage zu einer Monographie der Molasse in 1825, Geologie der westlichen Schweizer-Alpen in 1834, and the two-volume Geologie der Schweiz between 1851 and 1853, regarded as the high point of his research. He was a member of the Swiss natural sciences society for seventy-two years, was elected a foreign member of the Geological Society of London in 1850 and to the American Philosophical Society in 1864, was named a foreign honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1882, and received the Wollaston Medal in 1879.